Backpay Bombshell?

Lots of readers from North Lanarkshire have been in touch to ask where they stand (what they stand to lose), if the Council tries to stop them receiving any backpay that may be due from the late-running job evaluation (JE) scheme.  

Now I don't know is the honest answer because over a week after the Council and the trade unions announced that a 'deal' had been done everyone, especially the workforce, is still in the dark as to what this really means.

Which is an incredible state of affairs if you ask me and instead of clapping each other on the back, you would think that the Council would immediately release full details of the JE review so that people can see the proposals for themselves.

But that hasn't happened and the trade unions seems to be dancing to the Council's tune instead of standing up for the right of their members to know what is going on.

The backpay that would be due under any upgrading depends on the difference in pay (if any) between someone's old grade and new grade, and where their post would be placed on that new grade.

Given that this whole dispute goes back to 2007, I think it would be reasonable for anyone who was in post at that time (i.e. 2007) to go straight to the top of their new grade because that's the only thing that makes sense, if you ask me, since the new grades are intended to correct what went wrong with the old 2006/07 JE scheme.

If the difference in pay between the old and new grade were £2.00 an hour (an assumption not a prediction on my part), then the amount of backpay due would be £2.00 x a person's normal working week.

Using 30 hours as an example, that would come to £2.00 x 30 hours x 52 weeks in a full year = £3,120 less tax and National Insurance, of course. However this would only go back to 1 April 2015 which is the the originally agreed 'implementation date' for any new pay arrangements.

Yet we are now hurtling towards the end of June 2016 because the review is running very late and so I imagine any new pay arrangements could not be put in place until the end of July 2016 which would, therefore, add another four months (one third) to the backdating period.

So do the maths for yourself!

A bigger difference in hourly pay would obviously produce a higher figure in terms of any backdated pay and vice versa, as would an increase or decrease in the number of hours worked per week.

In any event the only way to get to the bottom of this is for the Council and/or the trade unions to explain what exactly is going on which they have failed to do up until now even though the review exercise should have been completed before the end of 2015.