My role in the estates division of city treasury covered a multitude of different functions.
I saw myself as a link between councillors, chief officers and members of staff who were asking for advice or who had problems.
Over my many years of working for the city council, I built up a good working relationship with staff and others as outlined above.
My knowledge was built up over years of experience enabling me to sort out the many problems that came my way.
This was not something that was written down or could be taught in a short space of time.
Some of the problems I sorted, if not resolved quickly, would have soon disrupted the department’s service.
Examples are lift malfunctions, radiator bursts, loss of computer use as well as other office equipment.
My daily work took me into many areas where confidentiality was paramount and where relationship had been built up on trust.
I am not saying that an agency worker could not deal with some of the basic issues that came my way, but there could very easily be serious breakdowns in the running of the department or at worst serious leaks in confidentiality.
The article The Trade Union Bill: Roger’s story first appeared on the UNISON site.
