Job Evaluation - Staff face up to £14k paycuts

[somabc]

Council staff facing pay cuts of £14,000 - The Inverness Courier

 

COMPUTER workers with Highland Council are facing pay cuts of up to £14,000 a year as the department is overhauled and the authority implements its job evaluation process.

advertising

 

The scale of the wage reductions has amazed staff, who claim they are being unfairly targeted because they are not in a frontline service and have little chance of finding alternative work locally.

 

Thirty-two information technology workers are undergoing interviews after their jobs were "deleted" and 29 new posts created. A single IT department has been established and the full-time jobs have different descriptions and been graded in line with the council's job evaluation process, which was ratified earlier this year.

 

One employee who has been on a fixed-term contract for four years says the lack of other IT jobs in the Highlands has left himself and his colleagues with little choice but to accept the move.

 

He currently earns £34,000 and is facing a potential cut of £14,000. "It wouldn't hurt that much if we were talking about £1000 to £2000," said the man, who asked not to be identified. "I know another younger colleague, whose wife has just given up work after having a baby is currently on £31,000. He faces a cut to £21,000. There are a lot of people who have got young families who are going to be really hit hard."

 

Unison's John Gibson said the IT staff had been hit with a "double whammy" because the new department had been created at the same time as the job evaluation process.

 

"This has been going on with them stuck in the middle," he said. "The timing has probably been advantageous for the council because people can't just walk out of jobs knowing there is not much else out there. We've had a lot of members contacting us to say their pay is going down and a lot of people are upset."

 

Mr Gibson, Unison's Highland branch treasurer, is himself facing up to a £2000 pay cut after 10 years working in the local authority's finance department and said about 12 per cent of council staff were facing up to reduced wages.

 

A council spokesman said the new IT department would provide a more effective service and the appointments would be subject to a ring fenced recruitment process, as agreed with trade unions.

Edited June 23, 2009 by somabc

[leco]

Stunned is a massive understatement. If my salary were cut by that much I'd be paying them!

[Butuz]

I'd be really interested to know what actual jobs those guys were doing for 34k and 31k. I mean it could be that they were actually being overpaid?

 

Butuz

[torledo]

i wouldn't worry too much if i were them.

 

If they take the result to appeal most of them will probably win, judging by the success rate of the appeals process elsewhere where job evaluation has already been undertaken.

[somabc]

I would have thought that these were central management jobs, ie overseeing schools or other council depts.

[leco]

I would have thought that these were central management jobs, ie overseeing schools or other council depts.

 

Chiefs rather than indians then?

[somabc]

If the chiefs get a pay cut, I'm sure the Indians will too

 

Job Evaluation - Frequently Asked Questions

Edited June 23, 2009 by somabc

[leco]

If the chiefs get a pay cut, I'm sure the Indians will too

 

Job Evaluation - Frequently Asked Questions

 

Or will they just cut out the indians altogether?

[torledo]

If the chiefs get a pay cut, I'm sure the Indians will too

 

32/29 [whatever the number is now] staff for an IT dept. is probably about right for a council of that size. So in amongst that you're going to have the usual makeup of IT staff required to manager council systems and possibly oversee schools support contracts in all possibility... help desk staff, senior technical officers, web/application teams [if that isn't outsourced] aswell as a handful of senior managers.

 

don't know the setup so can only guess, but absolutely sounds like indians and chiefs and not just chiefs.

[leco]

Maybe just the chiefs hitting the press because of the headline salary amounts involved?

[somabc]

More trouble in Scotland.

 

BBC NEWS | Scotland | South of Scotland | 'Termination' notes sent to 6,000

 

About 6,000 workers on a Scottish council are to receive letters which pave the way for them to be sacked and rehired on new contracts. The termination notices are being sent out by Dumfries and Galloway Council. They will only be enforced if attempts to reach a negotiated pay agreement with the employees concerned fail. Staff are set to be balloted soon on whether to accept the "single status" salary proposals designed to tackle historic wage inequalities. There have been numerous bids to agree the pay package over several years. A structure has now been put together which workers will be asked to vote on soon. It will only be after the outcome of the imminent ballot is known that we will know which approach is to be followed.

 

In the meantime, the council is taking steps to impose the deal if it is rejected at ballot.

 

Its employees would have their current contracts terminated on 1 October and then be rehired on the new pay scheme.

 

So if you are not happy with regrading you will lose your job?

[fafster]

So if you are not happy with regrading you will lose your job?

 

Looks like it. I can't see how something like that can be successfully appealed.

[broc]

Job Evaluation goes back to the days when employers paid men & women different rates of pay for doing the same job and allowed employers to pay men bonuses but not women.

 

To head off an increasing number of court cases, in 1997 the Govt & LA employers got together with the trade unions & agreed that by 2007 they would have this sorted. Job evaluation (aka Single Status) was born....

 

It is alleged that there was a gentlemans agreement(!) in 1997 that nobody should suffer, unfortunately the trade unions failed to get this in writing. Since then, the Local Government Association has used Job Evaluation as a means of levelling down salary levels, rather than up as the union thought it would be.

 

The employers are quite skillful at making public claims that xx% will be better off, yy% will be no worse off & only zz% will take a cut. usually the people who benefit are low-paid part time workers who often have more than one job with the council. They are counted as a winner in each case, allowing them to skew the figures. In addition, some school based employees have had their hourly rate increased but have been switched from term time contracts to full-time pro rata, often resulting in a pay cut, but even these are counted as winners!

 

As for chiefs & indians, the LA can choose to cap the evaluation process if it wishes, so everyone on scale nn & upwards can be excluded.

Edited June 26, 2009 by broc

[Fuzzz]

J

The employers are quite skillful at making public claims that xx% will be better off, yy% will be no worse off & only zz% will take a cut. usually the people who benefit are low-paid part time workers who often have more than one job with the council. They are counted as a winner in each case, allowing them to skew the figures. In addition, some school based employees have had their hourly rate increased but have been switched from term time contracts to full-time pro rata, often resulting in a pay cut, but even these are counted as winners!

 

There are lies, great lies and then statistics...

[torledo]

More trouble in Scotland.

 

BBC NEWS | Scotland | South of Scotland | 'Termination' notes sent to 6,000

 

 

 

So if you are not happy with regrading you will lose your job?

 

if your not happy, there's an appeals process.

[somabc]

if your not happy, there's an appeals process.

 

No if you're not happy your job no longer exists. They are terminating everyone's job if they do not agree. No appeals process.

[broc]

Many LAs have tried to employ a 'points' based system for evaluating jobs and creating job profiles by assigning points to things like budget responsibility, people responsibility, skills, etc etc.

 

Staff are then graded according to their roles & responsibilities on a best fit basis to a job profile. The theory is that they interview a number of post holders in a particular role to establish a job profile. In many cases however the number of people interviewed is very small.... often just one.

 

A major problem exists with this strategy for school based staff; you only have to look at the numerous threads that exist on Edugeek where people are discussing the role of technicians, network managers not to mention the dozen or so other roles carried out by support staff. Many of us on Edugeek know our roles in our own school are completely different from similarly 'titled' colleagues at other schools, even within the same LA. Unfortunately the people in HR making the decisions don't, so you end up with people in the wrong pigeon hole.

 

As Torledo says, there is a right of appeal, but only on the grounds that the role you perform carries greater responsibility than the one you have been slotted into.

 

I know of one case where a support worker in a school appealed, had the appeal rejected, and she was reduced a grade further. In that case the school re-employed her in a new role with greater 'responsibility' so she maintained the same salary she was earning prior to Job Evaluation.

[torledo]

No if you're not happy your job no longer exists. They are terminating everyone's job if they do not agree. No appeals process.

 

the same process of reoffering of jobs has happened in atleast one other authority. Not accepting the new contract did not result in dismissal from what i recall. And i'd be doubtful if the same outcome arises here. The respective unions would advise their members about this.

 

As far as i'm aware you have the right of appeal in such regrading exercises irrespective of whether the unions and authority come to an agreement. Infact the unions should indicate to members what the union stance is as far as what they advice their members to do re acceptance of new contracts and implications

 

Whereabouts in the process you are allowed to appeal i can't recall, but the right of appeal should be there.

 

Are you seriously saying there's no right of appeal anywhere in the process....if so, indicate a source where it says as such ?

 

I suspect your taking this at face value, and that this process is not dissimilar to where it's played out elsewhere. Plenty of sabre rattling between authority and unions, 'deadlines' from authorities to accept this or that. Much of it is the authority trying to get a move on with a process that will inevitably lumber on, and if your one of those who don't want to lose 14k in salary you better make damn sure you don't keel over to the 'accept or else' stance which is quite hollow seeing as no agreement has been reached.

Edited June 26, 2009 by torledo

[torledo]

Many LAs have tried to employ a 'points' based system for evaluating jobs and creating job profiles by assigning points to things like budget responsibility, people responsibility, skills, etc etc.

 

Staff are then graded according to their roles & responsibilities on a best fit basis to a job profile. The theory is that they interview a number of post holders in a particular role to establish a job profile. In many cases however the number of people interviewed is very small.... often just one.

 

A major problem exists with this strategy for school based staff; you only have to look at the numerous threads that exist on Edugeek where people are discussing the role of technicians, network managers not to mention the dozen or so other roles carried out by support staff. Many of us on Edugeek know our roles in our own school are completely different from similarly 'titled' colleagues at other schools, even within the same LA. Unfortunately the people in HR making the decisions don't, so you end up with people in the wrong pigeon hole.

 

As Torledo says, there is a right of appeal, but only on the grounds that the role you perform carries greater responsibility than the one you have been slotted into.

 

I know of one case where a support worker in a school appealed, had the appeal rejected, and she was reduced a grade further. In that case the school re-employed her in a new role with greater 'responsibility' so she maintained the same salary she was earning prior to Job Evaluation.

 

most schools seem to want to be outside of the whole single status/job evaluation scheme, but they'll have to be included into the process rather than get special measures or exceptions, exceptions exist in the system anyway [see paragraph 2]....

support staff will go through the same process as authority staff except the schools will be done afterward and the process lumbers on.

 

As you'll know broc, there is a process for requesting of a individual job evaluation because one's job doesn't fit into a generic job role as identified by JE...they'll send out a questionnaire and it's filled in with the line manager. This is one way to avoid being regraded based on being lumped in with other technicians or manahgers doing a fundamentally different role.

 

As for the appeals process, again from what i recall the success rate was impressively high in atleast one authority. Let's face it, the majority [a high percentage when all is said and done] who stick or move up slightly probably won't appeal as they are not losing out, those who do lose out will take to appeal many of those will win and be regraded in line with where they are currently.....i'd be interested to know after all negotiations, agreements, processes and appeals how many actually do end up worse off after the respective authority caves in.

 

This isn't even a PRP process and it shouldn't be used as an excuse or have validity as an exercise in reducing salaries....you can't do that in PRP anyway i don't think. They should use natural wastage to get rid of roles they don't/can't continue to pay for..... Having significant numbers of losers in this process just creates a rod for the authorities own back.