The Automobile Association is indulging in “corporate bullying” by attempting to ‘performance manage’ 450 staff out of their jobs in a bid to replace them with cheaper, lower skilled workers, the GMB union has claimed.
Patrollers across the country have allegedly been called into meetings and given a “take it or leave it” offer of £18,000 to quit their jobs in five days time or face being performance managed out of the door. Individual members of staff that deal with insurance and call handling in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Cardiff, Oldbury and Cheadle have also been sent confidential emails to the same effect, the union claimed.
It has linked the move to attempts by the AA’s parent company to refinance a £4.8 billion loan that comes due in 2014, something that Paul Maloney, the GMB’s national officer for staff, attested it was “desperately struggling to do”.
“The staff being targeted are the older staff with no warnings whatsoever of poor performance. It would appear that the AA have cut back that far on everything else that the only thing left is to cut staff levels and further de-skill the workforce,” he said.
Maloney also accused the AA of replaying a scenario that first took place in 2006 when private equity owners Permira and CVC took over the organisation. At this point, they also performance managed 3,000 out of a total 10,000 “out of the door”, he claimed.
“This was in blatant breach of redundancy laws covering reductions in staff. As they had de-recognised the GMB, they were able to bully all but a few staff to accept the take it or leave it £18,000 five day offer,” Maloney said, attesting that the same situation appeared to be happening again.
But the AA told The Scotsman that less than 200 of its 3,000 patrol staff would be affected by the latest of its “performance monitoring exercises”, which became necessary after they had failed to meet standards. A spokeswoman said that the individuals concerned would be given the choice of an £18,000 leaving payment or a “training and support plan”.
