Backpay Bombshell? (16/06/16)

A number of readers have been in touch to say that a stubborn rumour is doing the rounds in North Lanarkshire to the effect that the Council is planning to implement the late-running job evaluation (JE) review in such a way as to avoid paying the workforce any backpay they are due.

Now I can't see this happening for a number of important reasons:

1. The equal pay settlement reached with NLC last year drew a line under all pay and grading issues up to 31 March 2015.
2. So 1 April 2015 was always understood as the operative date for any new pay and grading arrangements going forward
3. As everyone knows, a JE scheme evaluates jobs as they are being done at the time - and clearly the duties and responsibilities of Home Carers, to name just one job, were being carried out from 1 April 2015 onwards
4. So any new rates of pay and higher grades can only, logically, apply from 1 April 2015 onwards. 
5. If not, the Council (and the trade unions) might just as well pull any old random date such as 1 April 2020 out of thin air
6. As a result 1 April 2015 is the only possible implementation date for the late-running JE review and the employees concerned must be entitled to be paid at their new rate and grades for all hours worked from 1 April 2015 onwards. 

Not just that, of course, because in my view any agreement North Lanarkshire has reached with the trade unions cannot override the right of individual employees to backpay, where appropriate.

Otherwise, the trade unions would be guilty of 'screwing' their own members in a way that would be truly shocking and indefensible.

So I think these rumours are probably just that 'rumours', although it is true to say that a week on from the JE Review being announced in the press, union members and the wider NLC workforce are still waiting to be provided with written details explaining the outcome.

I find it hard to believe that the local trade unions would attempt to sell their members out in this kind of cynical fashion, yet as regular readers are only too well aware this is exactly what happened back in 2006/07.

Surely the local unions would not enter into such a Devil's Pact again? - not least because if history were to repeat itself, the unions' credibility with ordinary union members would go right thought the floor. 

What would help clear all of this up, of course, is a clear and unequivocal statement from North Lanarkshire Council and hopefully this post on the blog site will spur the Council into action.