RUDGE BLASTS UNION’S “FALSE IMPRESSION” OVER SINGLE STATUS
20-12-2007
Alan Rudge, the councillor in charge of Birmingham’s controversial pay and grading/single status review, can’t be accused of lacking the stomach for a fight. He’s argued his corner on this website against Labour leader Sir Albert Bore and now takes up the cudgels against the trade unions.
It is more in sorrow than in anger that I must correct the entirely false impression given of the Council’s pay and grading review by Caroline Johnson on behalf of the trade unions in the Birmingham Mail of 4 December 2007. I respect the right of all elected trade union officials to represent and protect their members. But their arguments must be based on fact and an appreciation of the full picture.
Let’s remember that it’s the Conservative/Liberal Democrat administration which has introduced a salary structure designed to remove gender inequality, promote quality services and remove gross examples of overpayment. It’s just plain wrong to say this is being introduced on the cheap by “taking money from some employees to give to others”.
We’ve invested £23m this year alone in our pay bill, an increase of 4.1%. This rises to 5.8% next year. I don’t call that ‘on the cheap’.
“Thousands of women lose pay”. What would you expect, 75% of our workforce are women! The Single Status Agreement was created to ensure equality of pay, regardless of gender! Therefore, it is not just women who lose but men too. But both men and women will also gain.
Our new salary structure has been criticised as it is unlike other Councils. This is right! Unfortunately it is traditional structures which have generated inequality and unfairness, encouraged gross examples of overpay and completely failed to provide mechanisms for incentivising staff.
Our new structure brings us into the 21st Century, mirroring best practice, not just in the private sector but also in other progressive public sector organisations.
The trade unions claim to offer perspective on the pay review but achieve no such thing. Let’s look at the examples used.
- Amazingly, we are criticised for raising the pay of cleaners. Not only does their hourly rate rise from £6.07 per hour to £6.18 per hour but for the first time ever they will get automatic salary rises (£6.47 p.h. in 2010/11), work a shorter week and get up to 10 days extra holiday.
- Reference to the school meals service is made, and again we are criticised for paying “pitiful” increases despite the fact that again all receive a reduction in hours, incrementation and more leave! But curiously this group is not defined. This one-sided comment would fail to support the erroneous point if it mentioned Catering Supervisors, who will get an average increase of nearly £5k p.a. or Cook Supervisors who will see their annual income rise by almost £2 p.h?
- And it’s a strange perspective to criticise the Council for “taking money from some employees to give to others” in the case of Care Assistants. We would pay Care Assistants £16,000 p.a. if we adopted the trade union approach to place people in the new pay scale. But what they fail to mention is that if we used their approach the overall number of people who “lose” would more than double from 14% to over 31%. That probably wouldn’t go down too well with their members.
- Incorrect comments have been made about refuse collection. New contracts haven’t been issued to those employees yet, as we are working constructively with the unions to restructure and redesign jobs, providing both a better service to the public and better paid, more satisfying jobs for staff.
- There also appears to be some confusion about senior managers in Grades 6 & 7. There is no change in Grade 6 as claimed, and the planned change in Grade 7 is to remove an overlap. It advantaged just 0.07% of the staff involved.
- Yes, we engage consultants to help in our transformation process but they are already paying for themselves and helping to redesign jobs to make them better paid and more satisfying.
- We can all quote statistics but I’ll be precise. Worst case, 272 people (including 38 employed on less than 5 hours per week) lose more than £10,000, pro-rata. That’s equal to 4.8% of all those that lose and about 0.6% of all staff affected. And all the people will have their salary protected until April 2010.
There is also talk about low pay. The national minimum wage is £5.52 per hour. The minimum hourly rate paid by the Council is £6.09.
The union inaccuracies have been corrected. I want to move forward. We now have an effective pay structure. I will continue to work with the trade unions to maximise its benefits for both staff and the people of Birmingham. I will work with staff and the unions to minimise the impact on those staff who lose at the end of the protection period.
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