Pay bargaining in councils will be at breaking point if nothing more is put on the table beyond the current ‘two-option’ offer. Retaining the goodwill of staff is critical to the very survival of local government
On Saturday I stood in for Unison's general secretary Dave Prentis at a march and rally in Coventry against further coaliton cuts of £132m that will hit the city by 2016. With 800 council jobs already gone and 800 more to go – not to mention the services destroyed alongside the redundancies – it's not hard to see why Unison members, teachers, civil servants and community organisations were in marching mood.
In the city's Herbert Gallery for sustenance before we set off, I came face to face with an excellent exhibition – the 'City of Dreams' – a manifestation of Coventry's industrial history and re-birth after the bombing that destroyed much of the town in the early part of the Second World War. It’s the story of a city whose industry provided the world with ribbons, bicycles, cars, aeroplanes, fine engineering and much more from the 19th century on. A city that survived the Nazi blitz through the reconstruction efforts of the council and the public sector, only to be torn apart by its own government 70 years later.
Torn apart is not an exaggeration. The council itself has said that many of its services will have to go, adult social care will be rationed further, libraries will close and little will be left of the local state that helped give shelter and solace to lives shredded by the Luftwaffe.
Coventry's own Big Society is being dismantled too. Path-breaking community projects like WATCH and HillzFM in deprived areas like Hillfields are being forced to close after painstaking efforts over years to build community resilience and cohesion. The City of Dreams has become the City of Nightmares.
On the march, I walked alongside one of Coventry's one-time refuse collectors – a Unison steward called ‘Barry’. I asked him how refuse collectors and the service were faring under 'the cuts'. He told me that he's no longer just a refuse collector. He's become 'multi-skilled' – recycling, cutting hedges, sweeping streets and becoming a community 'eye', as well as collecting bins. A symbol of the redesign of jobs taking place in local government 'reorganisations' – and the extra work being carried out by council workers everywhere.
'Barry' wasn't complaining. The job is more interesting and he is hoping to negotiate a more-than-deserved upgrading for his fellow workers. If he does, he will be one of the few across UK councils to be recognised for the extra work he is doing. Around 260,000 jobs have gone since the coalition took office. Proud municipalities like Manchester, Tameside and Bolton have lost over 30% of their posts since 2010, with more job cuts to come. The latest local government settlement is hitting Labour councils very hard, while Tory Surrey finds itself cushioned.
In the midst of such carnage and extra work pressure, are 1.6 million local government workers who have not had a pay rise of any kind since 2010. No £250 for the 872,000 of them who earn below £21,000 – uniquely deprived within the public sector. Nearly a quarter of a million earn below Living Wage levels, with a bottom rate of £6.30 pence an hour – just skimming the National Minimum Wage. It’s the equivalent of a real cut in pay of 15% since the Coalition took office. Unison has just completed a survey of our local government members to see what the extra work and declining earnings since 2010 mean to them.
14,800 responded – so the results are not to be taken lightly. And they are both interesting and shocking. Over half routinely work unpaid overtime –almost 25% up to 10 hours a week. Over 80% say that employers' expectations, workload and pressure have increased, 62% say that service users' want more not less, while for 70%, staffing in their workplaces has been cut. No surprise then that 86% say that stress levels have increased and almost three quarters say that it is negatively affecting their work and personal lives.
Add to this the 26% who report a local pay cut – yes, cut, the 60% whose NJC car allowances have been replaced with inadequate HMRC mileage rates and the 30% whose overtime pay has gone and you will understand why 60% feel that they are not fairly paid for the work they do and why 53% are in debt – over half of them owing more that £5,000, and 11% over £20,000. 30% say that they are 'not managing' or 'hardly managing' general living costs.
As our survey results emerge, the Local Government Employers have made a 'two option' pay 'offer' for the 1.6 million workers covered by the NJC. Given that coalition pay policy for public sector workers is 1%, given the extra work our members are doing, given the additional local attacks on their pay and conditions, fair-minded folks might think that council workers are worth that below-inflation 1%. Not so the Local Government Employers.
The first option is for a 1% across the board increase, but only at the expense of removing NJC mileage allowances from the collective agreement – aka the Green Book – to be replaced by inadequate HMRC rates and the removal of the unilateral arbitration agreement, which allows either party to seek arbitration over a sector-wide dispute. In return, just an extra one day of annual leave (while many are facing cuts to holidays and/or additional unpaid leave at local level) and extended continuous service protection (as many are being transferred against their will to the private and voluntary sectors).
The second – 'punishment' – option, if the first option is not accepted, is for 1% for the 203,000 earning up to £7.19 pence an hour and a meagre 0.6% for the remaining 1,400,000, including social workers, teaching assistants, planners and nursery nurses, who surely have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. Indeed, 60% of social workers in Unison's survey have lost their NJC car allowances, while 73% work routine unpaid overtime and 62% are in debt.
No-one is pretending that beating poverty pay in the current climate is easy, but sector-wide bargaining in local government is surely at breaking point if nothing more is put on the table to recognise our members' efforts. After all, 25 councils are paying the Living Wage, others have pledged to do so. Employers in Yorkshire and Humberside and elsewhere are happy to pay 1% and councils not in the NJC are generally paying 1% and above this year.
So where does the employers' mandate for such a miserly offer come from? From opted-out councils that are paying more themselves? From those shelling out tens of millions of pounds on large accountancy firms to scope privatisation and reorganisation exercises? From those still putting cash into reserves? Or just from those who just cannot see that retaining Barry's goodwill is critical to local government's survival?
Coventry and other councils may have survived the Blitz, but they won’t survive the coalition's destruction without the workforce. Time to re-think that 'offer'.
