Agenda for Change = Unfair and Discriminatory

Agenda for Change is a job evaluation scheme - pure and simple - it's not rocket science and it's supposed to do what it says on the tin - i.e. assess and rank NHS jobs in an objective, fair and consistent manner.

But Agenda for Change was cobbled together in a great hurry - and only after a series of successful equal pay claims in the Cumbria NHS Trust sent the employers and the trade unions into a panic. For years before they had been happy to negotiate grading structures that paid male tradesmen and technicians much more than nurses and other predominantly female jobs.

So Agenda for Change was born with a very specific agenda in mind - and it was conceived by the very same people who had turned a blind eye to the scandal of equal pay in the NHS for years.

Now these same people will say that Agenda for Change is fair - that it rewards NHS employees for the skills that they use in their jobs - and that it doesn't discriminate against women, or anyone else for that matter.

Baloney!

Because Agenda for Change is being mismanaged and distorted locally - the information about the pay and grading outcomes for all jobs - male and female alike - is being deliberately kept hidden from NHS staff - so that people cannot see for themselves how one job is paid and graded according to another.

Fair and transparent it ain't - especially in this modern 21st century world which allegedly revolves around freedom of information.

So, what are the obvious problems with Agenda for Change?

• For a start, 99.9% of people on the new Band 1 (the lowest paid band) are - you guessed it - women. Statistically speaking this is ridiculous and it makes a complete mockery of the whole exercise - women are still stuck at the bottom of the NHS pay ladder.
• Agenda for Change treats male jobs more favourably than women - for example some male tradesmen get higher scores than nurses for Emotional Demands - yet unlike ward and community-based nurses they have no direct patient contact whatsoever!
• The employers (and the unions) say medical secretaries and tradesmen are both being treated fairly by being allocated to the same Band - yet the male job is paid a salary of £22,000 while the women's job is paid only £16,000 - and the female job can't progress all the way to the top of the pay scale - while the male job can.
• Before Agenda for Change a D grade nurse was assessed as being of equal value to a male electronics technician (Grade MTO3) - but after Agenda for Change the same two jobs have fared very differently - the male job is on Band 6 or even 7 - while the nurses job is routinely awarded only Band 5.
• Before Agenda for Change Nursing Assistants were evaluated as doing jobs of equal value to male maintenance workers - but after Agenda for Change the female dominated nursing jobs are getting paid thousands of pounds less.
• Male jobs benefit enormously from pay protection under Agenda for Change - their higher salaries and rates of pay continue until 2010 at least - whereas the undervalued jobs of women workers remain stuck at the bottom of the heap.
• Many male dominated jobs benefit from an automatic recruitment and retention payment of £2,000 a year - yet the same level of payment is denied to most female dominated jobs - the difference in treatment cannot be justified.
• Midwives under Agenda for Change are often given Band 7 - while comparable male jobs are being paid £10,000 per year more - but the higher pay of the male comparators is kept hidden by the employers and the trade unions.
• Agenda for Change in only being backdated to October 2004 - whereas an equal pay claim submitted today could be backdated to May 2002 - so the employers and the trade unions are cheating NHS staff out of 2.5 years of back pay.

Now that's why NHS employees should appeal their Agenda for Change grade and pursue an equal pay claim to the Employment Tribunals.

The present mess won't be sorted out within the NHS - because the employers and the trade unions are not just incompetent - they're also terrified that the decisions of their local grading panels will be properly scrutinised by an independent external body.