Worrying news reaches me that all is not well among the ranks of driving examiners. As we know, waiting times are increasing all over the country and many examiners are retiring when they could stay on a little longer simply, some say, because morale within their numbers is very low; a number are reported to feel that the DVSA is no longer a happy place to be.
Much of the discontent appears to be connected to the Modernising Employment Contracts (MEC), a cross government initiative designed to standardise the hours worked by all civil servants. It has been suggested to me that this was never a great deal in the first place and that most people who voted for it did so on the basis that the alternative was no pay increases, forever!
It is clear that the driving examiners union is not happy with it. At present it is urging its members – and nonunionised examiners – to sign a petition to the DVSA calling on them to:
- Provide proper and adequate admin time for all operational staff
- Stop any cuts to the current admin time they are allowed
- Allow part-time colleagues to be treated equally with their full-time colleagues.
- Ensure there are no detrimental cuts to current terms and conditions
- Halt the situation in which DVSA is introducing a multi-tiered workforce
- Stop the threatening behaviour regarding disciplinary action.
These problems are exacerbating the difficulties ADIs and their pupils are finding with longer test waiting times, which have been creeping up inexorably around Great Britain in recent months. Many ADIs are grumbling that their local DTC is now struggling to offer driving tests within 10 weeks; in some parts of the country the situation is far worse.
The challenge seems to be that the new employment rules mean there is very little incentive for any examiner to travel anywhere and as a result, DVSA is unable to be flexible in its deployment of examiners, sending them off to tackle areas with larger waiting times, as they have in the past.
Now it seems the unions have given DVSA official notice to ballot operational grade members (this includes vehicle examiners) for industrial action. This, the unions state, is in response to the attempts by DVSA to impose detrimental terms and conditions, using MEC as an excuse, and to introduce a new contract offer which will, by definition, introduce a multi-tiered workforce as the contract will be imposed on new starters and introduces annualised hours. I’m not entirely sure what that means but clearly the trade unions are not happy.
Fortunately, the DVSA’s new chief executive, Paul Satoor, has a background in senior HR roles across the public and private sectors, so hopefully he will be able to sort this matter out quickly and move towards providing driving tests in a timely fashion at all driving test centres.
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