Defend Alan Jenney

Those of you with long memories will remember I was on strike in December 2009 and into January 2010 with comrades working for Fujitsu Services.

Well, we're at it again, with the first day of action having been 30th June.

Nobody goes on strike lightly so why? Please read this leaflet and the whole sorry saga at the Unite Fujitsu news website.

Basically, one of my union rep colleagues based in Crewe, Alan Jenney, was dismissed as redundant on 11th July in clear breach of existing agreements and contrary to existing practices within Fujitsu.

Here is Alan's case from the leaflet linked to above:

"Jobs come and go frequently in Fujitsu, but this is normally managed through redeployment, without anyone being put at risk of redundancy dismissal. One recent example of this was the successful redeployment of hundreds of staff after the unexpected loss of the DWP Desktops contract.

In Alan’s case, Fujitsu wanted to cut one job from Alan’s team but immediately decided to declare a redundancy situation, without any attempt at redeployment. Fujitsu failed to respond to UNITE’s requests for an explanation, despite the fact that avoiding redundancies is the first point for redundancy consultation.

Fujitsu defined a “selection pool” of two people, the other was in the UNITE Manchester bargaining unit and so is covered by the union’s “Annex 1” agreement. That agreement is crystal clear that consultation is required, and that it starts when written notification is received by UNITE officers - this was never sent.

The agreement says that it is a bad idea to rush into selection. In line with this, both individuals affected and UNITE expressed a preference to delay selection and focus on redeployment and avoiding any redundancy dismissal.

Fujitsu falsely and bizarrely claimed that it would be illegal to redeploy anyone without selecting them for redundancy first. Fujitsu finalised the selection criteria before starting consultation and rushed ahead with a flawed selection process which selected Alan for redundancy.

The flawed selection process is a secondary issue. The disregard for the Annex 1 agreement makes it hard to draw any conclusion other than that Fujitsu knew in advance that they were going to select the person not covered by it – Alan."


Alan will be speaking at an SWP public meeting tomorrow night - wed 13th July 7pm - at the Mechanics Institute, Manchester, M1 6DD.

You can follow the campaign on Twitter: @DefendAlanJ and the Appeal For Support leaflet contains further contact details.