South Lanarkshire News

School Janitors in South Lanarkshire have been in touch to say that their salaries are to be slashed by £3,000 a year, apparently, after some kind of review carried out under their local '555' job evaluation (JE) scheme.

Now this 555 JE scheme came under fierce attack from the A4ES legal team during the long-running Employment Tribunal (ET) hearing against South Lanarkshire Council.

The tribunal ultimately decided that the 555 scheme was 'not to be relied upon' which led to the Council settling the outstanding equal pay claims of all A4ES clients.

The trade unions in South Lanarkshire went along with the 555 JE scheme and if you ask me, the local union reps were way out of their depth and hadn't the foggiest clue of what they were talking about when it came to job evaluation.

In any event, if there has been a review under the local JE scheme I can only assume that School Janitors in South Lanarkshire have been involved in the process - because that's the way job evaluation is supposed to work.

If I were a School Janitor in SLC I'd be asking my union to explain in writing:

1. Who instructed the review?
2. Who conducted the review?
3. When was the review conducted?
4. What were the review's Terms of Reference?
5. Which schools and School Janitors were involved?
6. Why has the official report from JE review not been shared with the workforce?

And I would also ask for a council wide meeting of School Janitors to be held, with a senior full-time official in attendance, so that local union reps can be properly held to account by union members.