The Hell of Single Status

Updated October 2005 (TGWU now opposes pay cuts)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions as the saying goes. And so it has proved with Single Status in Local Government. The trouble is that the GMB, TGWU and Unison at national level are stubbornly maintaining a rose-tinted view of Single Status when their members are suffering the hell of pay cuts of up to £12,000. Stress-related illness and damage to morale are common effects of these life-altering drops in income.

Single Status was sold to the unions’ members on the basis that there would be a 37 hour maximum basic week and fair and equal pay. All members were promised, in guidance issued prior to their vote for Single Status, that "many will gain and nobody should lose" in the pay and grading reviews that would be used to deliver equal pay. Pay rises for workers such as refuse collectors were alluded to because a value would be placed on their working environments.

Early reports, in 1999, of an £11,000 pay cut at Tendring District Council and stress counsellors having to be brought in by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, for staff stunned by pay cuts of up to 20%, should have sounded loud alarm bells at the unions’ headquarters. The reference to "increased sickness levels amongst demoralised staff" in the 2001 Single Status report of the Association of Contract Services Chief Officers should have caused more alarm. However, despite a Local Government Employers Organisation’s report confirming damage to morale at more than half the councils surveyed in 2004, the unions still seem unable or unwilling to accept that there is a major problem with pay and grading reviews.

2005 has seen an escalation of industrial action in protest against swingeing pay cuts as more councils feel compelled to undertake pay and grading reviews to meet the 2007 deadline imposed by the 2004 Local Government pay settlement and to avoid the attention of predatory equal pay lawyers. The three day official strike by workers at Coventry City Council has received the most publicity, but the unprecedented and spontaneous unofficial protests by shocked and angry workers at Moray Council, Middlesbrough Council and Devon and Cornwall Police Authority are possibly more indicative of the volatility engendered by pay and grading reviews. Much of the Police Authority workers’ anger seemed to be aimed at the union representatives who had agreed the pay cuts.

The losers in pay and grading reviews are often low paid workers such as refuse collectors and women such as teaching assistants, clerical workers and dinner ladies - the very people who were supposed to gain. Even women whose hourly rate has been equalised up have lost by having their hours reduced. This has happened at Cheshire County Council, Brighton Council, Middlesbrough Council and elsewhere. Additionally, there is growing evidence of pay and grading reviews being used, as at Moray Council, to boost the pay of senior managers or, as has been alleged at North East Lincolnshire Council, to cut the overall pay bill. Councils are increasingly using ‘sign or you’re fired’ threats to force through pay cuts.

Many of the problems with Single Status stem from the Government’s failure to provide the funding for pay modernisation in Local Government as it has for Agenda for Change in the NHS. Council taxpayers and workers have been left to pick up the tab. The problem has been compounded by the unions’ failure to honour their promise that "nobody should lose" by claiming that pay cuts are required by the Equal Pay Act. This U-turn is based on the dogmatic Counsel’s Opinion of just one QC that the unions won’t to release to their members.

The QC’s Opinion would seem to completely ignore the pay protection provisions of the Employment Rights Act and landmark legal judgements that would support unlimited protection when, as is virtually always the outcome of pay and grading reviews, the red-circled jobs are not predominantly male. It would also seem to ignore the possibility of the significant margin of error inherent in the subjective and pseudo-scientific process being a ‘material factor’ in terms of the Equal Pay Act that might justify at least long term pay protection. The QC’s suggestion, revealed in recent union guidance, that "no red-circles" (i.e. immediate pay cuts) would be an optimum arrangement confirms just how dogmatic and unbalanced her Opinion is.

Another unique feature of pay and grading reviews is that the workloads, duties and responsibilities of the downgraded jobs do not change. Tribunals have only ever deemed long term pay protection to be unlawful in cases where the comparators’ duties and responsibilities have been demonstrably reduced. Even in these clear cut cases, 2.5 years pay protection was considered by one tribunal to be "relatively short".

The problem with pay and grading reviews has been further compounded by the unions’ agreement, in full knowledge of the inadequate funding and the swingeing pay cuts and stress being suffered by their members, to the deadline for pay and grading reviews. The unions’ attitude seems to be that equal pay must be achieved regardless of the cost to many of their members, both male and female, and that only the pay and grading reviews process they have put so much effort into developing and promoting must be used for this purpose.

The GMB, TGWU and Unison’s response to their members’ growing anger has been to belatedly propose that pressure should be put on the Government to provide funding for Single Status. However, the Government, like its predecessors since 1979, perceives Local Government as an easy target for cost-cutting. That is why council workers now earn, on average, 20% less than their private sector equivalents. Further funding is unlikely without widespread industrial action and disruption to council services. With their pay falling further behind and their pensions, sickness benefits and allowances under attack, the mounting pressure of council workers’ anger could soon explode in this way. The national pay strike in 2002 and the support for a pensions strike earlier this year are signs of growing militancy in a workforce that was previously too apathetic.

If the unions were really concerned about the interests of their Local Government members, they would call a halt to pay and grading reviews based on whole workforce job evaluation unless and until adequate funding becomes available. However this wouldn’t mean abandoning their battle for equal pay. Pay and grading reviews could be based on equal pay audits with targeted job evaluation being used, at much less cost and without the need for pay cuts, to address any equal shortcomings found. After all, that is how Employment Tribunals deal with equal pay claims, with pay being equalised up and never down. The unions would then be able to concentrate more of their efforts on smashing the glass ceilings that probably account for most of the gender pay gap in any case.

Update – TGWU Service Sector Leader Tells Negotiators to Oppose Pay Cuts

Since this report was originally published, one of the three Local Government trades union has changed its guidance on pay protection for pay and grading reviews. Responding to the motion passed at the TGWU’s summer conference opposing the principle of some workers’ pay rises being subsidised from savings achieved by cutting the pay of others, Peter Allenson’s conference address included the following: "Our negotiators have been told that they should seek immediate pay parity, a full 6 year backdated payment, including interest, plus injury to feelings and no pay cuts" This is an extremely welcome change from Peter’s previous guidance which repeated the extremely dogmatic advice of the unions’ QC, Jennifer Eady, that "no red-circling" (i.e. immediate pay cuts) would be an optimum outcome for negotiators to aim for.