Unite in AXA would like to wish all our members a merry Christmas and happy, safe and prosperous New Year.

Click here to read the latest Unite in AXA newsletter on today’s announcement in AXA Insurance. Please leave your feedback below or talk to your local union rep.

Three members have volunteered to become union reps to help make AXA a better place to work in and assist their colleagues with any workplace issues:

Jason Anderson (Birmingham)

Neil Garner (Bristol AXA Tech)

Fred Butler (Ipswich)

Thanks to all for volunteering.

We are still looking for more reps in a number of sites, especially in Bristol and Basingstoke Wealth.

The TUC has welcomed Steve Webb’s announcement that he does not intend to change the law to make it easy for scheme to end RPI indexation where their rules require it. Read more about this here.

Unite in AXA union reps are meeting on Thursday to discuss pay, before talks with AXA commence next week. Make sure you have given your feedback to your local rep or left it on this site…

At the AXA European Works Council in Paris today, AXA President Henri de Castries was challenged over the quality of jobs being created within AXA in Western Europe and whether AXA was moving to a “McJobs” culture of low pay, low prestige roles driven by a cost cutting culture.

In response he stated that whilst there was a need for everyone to “accept flexibility” there was “no long term benefit to customers and we will not remain successful through poor quality jobs”.

Today is the 12th International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

For more information click here.

Click here to read the latest Unite in AXA newsletter on the 2011 pay claim.

Please leave your feedback below or talk to your local union rep.

Following Paul Evans’ announcement that he was splitting AXA Insurance into two distinct business units, Unite in AXA met briefly with Steve Hardy (personal) and John O’Neill (commercial) earlier this week to hear their high level thoughts.

Whilst the inevitable cost challenge facing commercial and personal will be high on their agenda, both CEO’s stated that Paul Evans had made it clear to them that redundancies had to be bottom of the list and he would not countenance getting rid of staff now and then recruiting when the business expands further down the line, a stance Unite is extremely pleased to see adopted.

We touched on the need to improve the working culture in AXA (indeed John and Steve beat us to the punch on this) and also the need to empower staff to do their jobs and remove the layers of bureaucracy and sign off that stagnates decision making within AXA which found favour with all parties.

Unite in AXA will be meeting both John and Steve again in November for a more detailed discussion on their plans. No doubt we will disagree on some details but the broad thrust of what the company want and what the union want is identical (a profitable stable business) so hopefully this initial meeting bodes well for the future.

A number of members have volunteered to become union reps to help make AXA a better place to work and assist their colleagues with any workplace issues:

Hazel Daniels (London OBS)
Min Street (Coventry)
Isaac Turner, Kayt Walker and Alex Mucha (all Ipswich)

Thanks to all for volunteering.

Sadly Phoebe Rope has stood down as she moves to pastures new outside AXA and we’d like to thank her for the help and assistance she has provided both Unite in AXA and the union members in Ipswich over the years.