Bonus v Job Evaluation

I've read some ludicrous things in the formerly 'secret' report to North Lanarkshire's Corporate Management Team (CMT) from August 2005 which was only released to me after a successful appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC).

But here's the most crazy claim so far, one which appears in various documents within the report regarding the application of the Council's new job evaluation scheme (JES).

"Consolidation of a number of allowances and bonus, taken account of in JE exercise, based on year end 31.3.05 earnings"   

Now the reason this is such a ridiculous thing to say in an official report to the Council's top brass is that job evaluation and bonus are two separate things: job evaluation is a way of measuring the skill and responsibility levels of a job whereas bonus is about productivity or how hard someone is working in a job.

A job evaluation scheme is a way of objectively measuring the skills and responsibilities of a variety of jobs and putting them into a pecking order or 'rank' order that passes the test of common sense.

So you would never get a refuse collector scoring more points or being graded more highly than a refuse driver, just as you would never  have a catering assistant coming out with a better grade than a cook-in-charge.

A bonus could still be paid, in theory at least, to any of these jobs but bonuses have nothing to do with job evaluation and under Scotland's 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement if the practice of paying bonus were to continue, then the additional payments had to be non-discriminatory, i.e. accessible to all council employees and not just traditional male jobs.

And that would have been crystal clear to even a relatively junior manager or trade union rep, never mind the highest paid 'brains' in North Lanarkshire Council.