North Lanarkshire Update
Here's what I said about the 'new' North Lanarkshire job evaluation (JE) review back in May 2015 which the Council was forced to agree to as part of last year's equal pay settlement.
Now if the Council had agreed to my suggestions I suspect the JE exercise would be in much better shape than it is now, running six months late and with the workforce growing increasingly restive after being kept completely in the dark.
Apparently Home Carers in North Lanarkshire received the following text message the other day which looks to me to be exactly the same as the one posted by the local Unison branch recently:
"As you will be aware, the Council and unions have been undertaking a joint re-evaluation process for certain posts, overseen and validated by an Independent Technical Expert. The joint team has now concluded their re-evaluation assessments and the Independent Technical Expert is now undertaking an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) on the outcomes. The outcomes and EIA require to be considered by the Joint Re-evaluation Board and Council before employees can be notified of the outcome of the re-evaluation of their job. Dates are currently being scheduled for a meeting of the Joint re-evaluation Board."
As I said on the blog site this raises a lot more questions than answers and if you ask me what people really deserve is some straight talking and hard information, instead of being treated like idiots.
North Lanarkshire Update (01/05/15)
1 A firm from commitment from all parties to complete openness and transparency during the re-evaualtion process
2 Publication of all female dominated jobs to be re-evaluated and reasons for selection 3 Publication of all male dominated jobs to be re-evaluated and reasons for selection 4 Publication of all revised job descriptions and an opportunity for input/comment 5 Publication of all JES scores and individual JES factor scores 6 Publication of a 'rank order test' before any new proposals are finalised 7 Agreement to a further Equality Impact Assessment (prior to implementation) by an independent person not selected by the Council which revisit the issue of grade boundaries
Now I'm sure there will be lots of people within the workforce who would support this 'seven point plan' and I am happy to work with the trade unions as well to ensure that there is no repeat of what happened in the past.
So, I'm prepared to offer my services to carry out a further Equality Impact Assessment, not just because the last one didn't work out too well, but in order to achieve an outcome that is seen to be fair by everyone involved, especially the workforce.
In fact, I'll go further and say I'd be prepared to do conduct another Equality Impact Assessment free-of-charge which would also save the Council some money into the bargain.
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