NLC Update (29/06/16)
Here's the advice that Unison is apparently issuing to Home Care members in North Lanarkshire regarding the outcome of the Council's late-running job evaluation (JE) review.
"Our branch secretary informed us this morning that when job re-evaluation takes place employees are automatically placed at the bottom of the pay grade they are upgraded to.
"This would result in spinal column 22 if no equal pay claim was made or spinal column 23 if an equal pay claim was processed, applicable to grade 7."
Now I find this very peculiar for the following reasons:
- The Council is the employer and senior managers in NLC should be taking responsibility for explaining these issues to employees
- The grades involved are not new grades and many of the equivalent male comparator jobs have been at their top of their respective pay scales for years
- No such 'rule' about re-evaluation exists and the unions ought to be standing up for their members interests instead of acting as a mouthpiece for the Council.
**STOP PRESS** (28/06/16)
A kind reader has been in touch to say that has received an explanation, of sorts at least, fromher trade union about the new grades arising from the late-running NLC job evaluation (JE) review and where people are being placed on their new pay scales.
Apparently, the trade unions' position is that employees are automatically placed at the bottom of the appropriate spinal column, if their job is upgraded following a JE exercise.
Now I haven't seen this advice as yet, but the whole point about the recent job evaluation in North Lanarkshire is that the latest JE Review is intended to correct the mess that was made last time around in 2006/07.
So these are not really 'new' grades in the normal sense of the word, but grades that should have been in place many years ago.
In which case putting people to the bottom of the pay scale is not the right thing to do, if you ask me.
