Increased holiday – a thankless task?
“We’re increasing the minimum holiday allowance from 23 days to 25 days after reviewing the market and listening to feedback from our employees…”
Whilst the increase in the minimum holiday entitlement for Associate and Senior Associate grades is very welcome, we are disappointed that the company communication fails to recognise the involvement of Unite in AXA in its implementation.
It might seem churlish of us to blow our own trumpet here, but it is important that members and employees are aware that Unite in AXA is continually involved in the uphill battle to improve their terms and conditions and know when this work results in something positive.
It was Unite in AXA that “reviewed the market” in the first instance, contacting the senior Unite reps in Allianz, Aviva, Legal & General and Royal & Sun Alliance to ascertain their holiday entitlements to compare to ours. Apart from Allianz, our main insurance competitors had an entry level of 25 days holiday (rising up to 30). This information we passed to AXA in January and it formed part of our pay negotiations when we asked for parity on holiday entitlement.
AXA agreed in February that, as part of the pay deal, it would review the company offering following the market data we had provided (see our newsletter 08.02.22). They did seem amenable to the idea of a market matched uplift and consequently we are pleased that out efforts earlier in the year have born fruit.
We don’t do our role in Unite in AXA to be fawned and receive praise, we want results not plaudits, but it is important that members and employees realise what goes on behind announcements such as this one from the company which whitewashes out the involvement of its employee representative bodies.
Postscript: since posting this the One page post has been updated to include reference to Unite in AXA 🙂
Andy Said,
July 4, 2022 @ 2:37 pm
What a shame they didn’t feel they could create parity for those of us beyond Associate and Senior Associate who have effectively seen our terms degraded by not having the same uplift at the other end of the scale.
“our main insurance competitors had an entry level of 25 days holiday (rising up to 30)” but AXA only go up to maximum of 28.
steveblease Said,
July 4, 2022 @ 4:17 pm
Not all our competitors gave up to 30 (some were 28 like AXA) but we aspire to the better terms offered elsewhere and will push for this again.
Tanya Said,
July 4, 2022 @ 3:48 pm
will you be pushing for long term staff to have the holiday entitlement reviewed, seems so out of touch with the market that their is no reward for long service
steveblease Said,
July 4, 2022 @ 4:16 pm
We do this every year. We cannot use ‘long service’ as a reason as that falls foul of age discrimination legislation but do push for an increase in the top end as well as the bottom. We got half this year.