ISS staff vote for strike - another bonus of PAYD!
 

BBC News - RAF base workers in England and Wales vote to strike

No dates yet, I wonder if the company has contingency plans? Valley, Cranwell and Scampton look as though they will be worst hit.

At first I thought you were talking about ISS tutors. I guess this is one of the many benefits of contracting out and using civilian staff. Time for livers-in to move into the local pub in rates one until the strike is over.

I was wondering how the staff of the International Space Station would walk out on strike?!...Sorry, couldn't help it.

Re the actual issue, this really does add to the old 'save as you starve' joke about PAYD, contractorised messing etc.

I can't help but wonder how much longer QR's will manage to oblige us to pay to be members of our respective messes. If the product is no good and you don't want to buy it, why should you be forced to? I do 'get' the esprit de corps stuff, but a man has a limit.

hmmm - should those on the 'longest hold at cranwell?' thread be worried?;) Someone will be needed to clean Chom after both Officers graduate at the next ceremony. More block bull-nights and self-clean possibly? (with approved elf and safety cleaning equipment obviously!)

Frankly, if the standards of food and service are anything like some of the Messes I have stayed in in recent years, I don't think the Mess members will miss much.

At my last unit, after we transitioned to PAYD the livers-in voted with their feet and wallets after the quality and quantity of food plummeted. In fact it became so bad - for the contractor - that the Mess was forced to call an emergency meeting as the contractor complained that they were losing money. We pointed out that if they improved the quality and quantity of the food improved it might help matters, but until that time, Mess members would invariably go to Tescos and cook for themselves in the kitchen areas of the SLAM accommodation.

That's not to say contractors can't be a good thing. The contractors at Bentley Priory around 1999/2000 were fantastic and proved that you can have a symbiotic relationship where the company makes money and the Mess members are happy with the service being provided. It's the only contractorised Mess that I've seen where that was the case mind, but it does prove that it's possible if the company views us a human beings rather than walking cash machines.

ISS are going on strike, to demand higher wages for providing us with the god awful ****e they serve up every day???...so presumably they'll foot the bill by charging us more for their god awful ****e? I'm sorry, but their business model is deeply flawed in the fact that they clearly put squeezing as much profit as possible out of the contract ahead of delivering a quality service, hence them making no money when no-one wants it! It's a mess not a f@&king soup kitchen!!

I was at Church Fenton a few months ago and could hardly believe the slop they make there...it's as close to pure stodgy as you can possibly get!

Remember the old job description for RAF Cooks.... Fitters and Turners..... fit good food into containers and turn it into sh*t :}

and it was far from the truth in most stations i served at..

Insulting 8 pence an hour pay rise
 

How does that compare to the glorious pay rises that the rank and file have received recently?

Have spent time in Deadloss (Cranwell), Lossie and Northwood O's Messes over the last few months. Have to say, the food and helpfulness of staff in the last 2 has been particularly impressive and fairly decent at Cranwell. So no complaints with PAYD from my experience (so far)!

What the 'rank and file' get is completely irrelevant to the discussion. GMB and Unite don't represent them and the T&Cs in relation to persons employed by a private company and those of service personnel are not very comparable.

The RAF Chef's training course was the hardest course in the Air Force. Must have been as none of them ever passed!:E

Food at Honington is been the best ISS / PAYD that I've had so far. :ok:

Are we really criticising RAF chefs??

I have found them to be outstanding and having lived in a mess relatively recently the cuisine and presentation to be astonishingly good. Made the the transition to ISS even harder to stomach...

RAF chefs on detachement are equally valued and given the produce available they could make surprisingly good meals. On a recent 'purple' exercise the head army chef announced that each service would do what it did the best. The RAF got to cook, the RN created the party and did the drinks whilst the Army acquired the raw ingredients - only 2 of them were caught and arrested whilst conducting the elegant shopping.

It was an outstanding event and the 2 that were released got a cheer when they were announced to the masses at the end of the meal.

At KKIA during GW1, the pongos had to be banned from using the RAF's facilities, because no-one was using the pongos' own feeder.

Even pongos weren't that stupid...

Bruggen and Brize were my favourite for food in the 80's, both had high and low points,

Bruggen had the barbie outside during the summer, a high point, and the guy (SAC) that wanted to be a pro chef when he left the RAF, so he used to volunteer to do QRA where he could try out his repertoire on us, and it was gratefully received with some first class meals. One truly hopes you made it, we all used to look on the list to see if he was down to cook as we knew we were in for a treat. For those that never met him, he used to come in the morning, run several menus that he had produced or from one of his books, describe it and run it by the Engineers and ask which we fancied, he would then go raid all the messes for the ingredients to make them.

Brize as a shift worker had the meals to match. The place used to fill up with aghast Civi's working on the base when they realised the food they were getting for the cost of a meal ticket. Steak bar.. Omelette bar and sweets that had so much booze in them...

Break out the compo and hexi!

Seriously though....

From Morecombe and Wise I think...

Eric- My Uncle was in the RAF in WW2- Killed 200 men in one night

Ernie- Was he bomber pilot?

Eric- No, he was a cook at Biggin Hill.

Sorry!

Having just sampled some of the food from the RAF Catering Competition I think someone did pass :)

The question arises however, where do service chefs serve? If the UK base is all contractors then it would seem that the only billets are overseas, under the sea or on it.

An apocryphal story about Lyneham which had umpteen serveries - roast pork, roast beef, steaks, salad etc, etc. At an airman's messing committee meeting one new lad complained about the lack of choice. The WO i/c catering was inandescent and quoted the 27 choices of food at lunchtime. The new lad replied "It's always the same 27 choices"

Old Nursing Officers mess at Halton in 80s, brilliant food and afternoon tea was amazing.

Yes. And no.

Yes, ISS are a totally different organisation to MOD, with their own Ts&Cs etc etc and therefore it is largely irrelevant what both bodies decide to pay their own people from the other organisation's perspective.

But also no when we are constantly being reminded of the role of contractors in the whole force concept. And when one element of that whole force has repeatedly gone above and beyond and has been on a pay freeze (cut) for several consecutive years whilst another element is widely and regularly noted for the lack of quality and poor value for money and yet still demands pay rises, there is a higher level presentational issue here. And in that light, ISS won't do themeselves any favours in the eyes of a large proportion of the serving military who have to live on base and put up with what restricted offerings are available.

ISS are over a barrel.

The company may wish to provide the service that they contracted to provide but need to make a profit.

Its workforce may be paid by the company but are not 'company men'. If ISS folded its tents and crept away the new company taking over would probably employ, and be required to employ, the majority of the existing workforce.

Inevitably the new contract price would be higher in expectation that the militant employees would continue to seek higher wages.

Therein lies the flaw in contractorisation.

But if you (or anyone) are going to start screaming 'rank and file' then a comparisson needs to be drawn to ISS' 'rank and file', not to decisions/policies laid down by ISS' management.

Simple fact is that ISS is a private company and it's 'rank and file' are allowed, by law, to join and be represented by a union. In this case the 'rank and file', through their union, have decided this profit making private company has not offered a wage increase in line with what they, the 'rank and file', believe is acceptable and therefore are threatening to withdraw their labour, a quite legal and well-estabilished possibility within unionised labour forces.

Whether you agree with employees (or 'rank and file') of private sector businesses (defense-related or otherwise) having the ability to strike over grievances related to working conditions is moot, it is something they are allowed to do.

Should they do it? I believe they have a good case to but hey, I'm one of those horrible socialists you've heard about, complete with union (well RCN) card of my own, you'd need to make up your own mind. In my humble opinion though "they work for the military and the military haven't had a pay rise" is a bad start.

As for the policy of contractorisation, yes I think it has its flaws and would much rather see such services controlled directly by the state (no suprises there!) but the concept is not a recent one, indeed in various parts of the military its been going on for hundreds of years. What has perhaps changed though is the military's ability to control said contractors sufficiently with it seeming that oversight has been lost.

See, as one of those nasty capitalists, I do find it irratiting when organsitations and groups want to hang on to the coat tails of the military, are quite content to take whatever kudos they can get from the association of contributing to the defence of the country, but then in the next breath are happy to stamp their feet when they don't get their own way. If we have to put up with contractorisation as part of a one force concept, fine, we will. But you are in or you're out, you can't pick and choose.

Hi JTO. At #13 you said
I'm with you. RAF Chefs and cooks were/are tremendous.

The food at Cranwell when I started my RAF career was a real morale booster for a young guy in his first few months away from home. I even got to enjoy Brown Windsor Soup!

In all my subsequent tours in RAF staffed messes, I enjoyed the everyday food enormously. And I never left a Guest Night or Dining in Night without feeling I had enjoyed a seriously good feast.

When I got married, sometime in the last century, I held my reception for about 90 people in the mess. All the catering was done by RAF cooks - even the wedding cake! It was great.

(I the early 70's I lived in the mess at Salalah. The head Chef (civilian) was called Uniz, he was from the sub-continent and his Crayfish Thermidor, his curries and things he used to do with eggplants (brinjal) were just wonderful.)

On the other hand, I spent some time living in contractorised messes, in the UK, in the last few years before I retired and I found the food and service was tremendous.

One Sunday, on a lonely standby (in the bar), civi cook comes through and asks me what I would like for lunch, no menu offered, so I told him what I would like. Half an hour later he brought it through to the bar on a tray. So no complaints there!

Rgds SOS

I've just remembered - late last year (Nov IIRC) I Walked from Bishopsgate into Liverpool Street Stn through the adjacent arena type square (normally occupied by yuppies on lunch break or after work dinkies) and came across some sort of sleep in.

The square was full of sleeping bags and at one end an RAF field catering Sqn had set up a full mobile kitchen. I didn't get the chance to sample the grub, but the aroma was fantastic. The whole thing was in aid of a charity for the homeless.

It was great to see the, hard working, boys and girls doing their bit for the unlucky members of our society.

(Thread creep I know - but only a bit!)

Rgds SOS

Melchett I am normally in agreement with your POV but this confuses me:

Do you mean the service industry contractors that cite the number and value of Government contracts that they have been awarded.

I see that as a company issue.

Who? Employees or the company? The employees often have little choice. Many would have been TUPEd in from the civil service and previous contractor(s). Not for them is the kudos for working for the military.

But therein lies the rub. They can indeed not so much pick and chose but adhere strictly to the contract.

Most contracts will have been awarded where the contractor has built in an annualised inflation element into the contract. If he got it wrong then he will try and correct it by economies.

Only where the contractor fails to meet the contract terms can the Service hold him to account. The first line of attack is the Contract Monitoring Team. Now many contracts will contain errors such as over specifying something, say too many meals per week, but the contractor has only had to supply 80%. A good team can get the contractor to, say, increase food quantities or qualities to return the output to the same contract value.

That notional saving (however it arises) should not be used by the contractor to balance his books.

Or is the problem that the MoD, in a desperate effort to be seen to cut costs to please the Chancellor, takes the standard step of removing something (in this case catering) from the core balance sheet but then has to ensure that the winning contractor's bid is sufficiently low to show the required savings?

It is planning to fail and seems to have done just that.

crab, indeed, Prime was a perfect example. Painting buildings was one of the contracted items in the contract. The contractor came in with a plan, the plan included an element of profit for painting buildings.

Come year 2 the painting element was withdrawn. The contractor lost the planned profit, and contractor was now over manned for smaller contract.

It was a fight that my old branch was never going to win, we topped out at Wg Cdr when our branch sponsor was moved sideways after openly criticising PAYD at a grown up conference. AOC's rollocking and all that. I helped work up an option up that meant the RAF Catering Branch could have done PAYD for the same price, quell surprise it was turned down. I had face time with CAS and that bloke who runs the police in Rutland, claimed it was an Army led party and all that. Poor leadership in my opinion!

Saving across all 3 services £120 million year for PAYD. Losing the goodwill of some of the best people I had the best part of working with for over 21 years, priceless.

Grrghhhhhh!!!!!!!!

OC Chips,

The SNCO manager of one of (in my humble opinion) the best run messes I see clients in, pressed the button because of ISS.

Strike, you say?

F95 at home base? Thank you, please....or, b, wil they just call in the Catering Branch who should have been in the game all along...

Seriously though, show me one civilianised or contractorised element of the MoD that is actually adding value to our lives.

No, thought not. :mad:

Uncle G - if you want to see contractorisation delivering an improvement to Service life, take a look at Northwood. They've re-built the whole place and it's so much better than the dreary old site that it was. As someone noted further up this thread (and I completely agree), they serve pretty good food in all 3 Messes too.

Couldn't agree more that some contracts and some contractors aren't in it for the greater good of the average Serviceperson, but it seems a bit harsh to put everyone in that bracket.

The PAYD 'core menu' price is fixed to the basic Serviceperson's wage - so our pay freeze isn't just hurting us (but I'm not sympathetic). A possible solution would be not to order the basic 'core menu' and moan about it - order something else from the menu and pay 50p more. Or go to Tesco.....:=

I was told by one of the civvy staff where I am that when ISS came in the civvy staff all enjoyed a pay cut, which left at least one of them struggling to pay their mortgage. So wanting a decent pay rise to at least get themselves back on an even keel, as it were, doesn't seem so bad.

I do not know the ins and outs of TUPE but I understood that the pay and conditions of someone TUPEd were maintained.

I know of one unit where the staff were TUPEd in. Later they thought that another unit, same contractor, same roles, was being paid more and they threatened a strike until they were shown that their preserved CS Ts&Cs were in fact much better.

So I wonder what the truth is.

Pay and conditions may have remained the same but perhaps they lost their regular overtime.

Rector - Northwood is hardly an example that could be compared to other units when you consider the rank of those that use the facilities.

With regards to paying the extra money for a better meal, yes that is an acceptable way to combat the poor core menu. However, when visiting N, Wales recently the 'Supreme' choice was ordered and it was slop and returned to the chef. The alternative wasn't much better!! Which was a complete shame, as previously dining there it was probably one of the better facilities I have used. More importantly, this whole PAYD/CRL puts the pressure on the ISS staff to make excuses for the inadequacies of the contract.

It would be interesting to see what HMP use to model their catering contract on?

On arriving at a certain Bucks HQ in 2010, I was delighted to find on my first evening that the mess had not gone over to PAYD - complimenting th Chef on the excellent food, he replied "Don't get used to it, Pay-as-you-dine starts in 2 weeks!" He was right. Five of the chefs left in the first 10 days mainly because they couldn't bring themselves to work to the strict recipes demanded by the contractor. Food is now distinctly average.

It's also clearly not true that T&Cs can't be changed. The mess staff there were paid weekly. Suddenly, the company changed this to monthly. In effect, this meant that they wouldn't get paid their next 3 expected pay packets. For the domestic staff in particular this was a massive potential problem.

MAC monitoring is not working, and the company seems free to increase its prices whenever it likes. Those units where a better standard of food is maintained appear to have done so by abandoning the core meals concept (I think Northwood is one of theme based on a recent visit).

I often wonder whether PAYD would ever have been accepted by the commanders if they'd started at the HQs. Certainly at Henlow (a PAYD Trials Site) we kept asking when the 'Trial' would be finished and we could go back to the old system. Answer came there none.

As for HMP, some work was done by a mate at Henlow following a change-over of contractor and a new menu. The menu was NOT up to the standards demanded by HMP guidelines.

STH

On the question of TUPE, not as simple as it appears, only certain elements of contract protected and then only for 2 years normally. If part of a big unionised workforce can sometimes be reasonable deal but the legal requirement isnt very good for most people. Sounds like the normal business model in most places these days, whatever profits being made they want more and pay big bonuses to senior managers regardless . If a workforce is looked after no one needs to join a union, which would be the cheaper option in the long run !

Mess Staff Strike
 

The strike is today, has anyone at Cranwell, Scampton, Kirton in Lindsey, Cosford or Shawbury seen any effects?

BBC News - RAF civilian staff go on strike in pay dispute

'ISS said it was "disappointed" 120 of its 3,000 staff at RAF sites had rejected the offer of a 1% pay increase and had decided to walk out.'

I know they aren't paid much, but shouldn't they remember the pay rises for those they serve have only just got 1% and of course they have no option to walk out!

Allegedly a group of strikers spent their time sounding air horns during the graduation parade at Cranwell today.