A storm is brewing in local government, where employers and unions are at loggerheads over postponed pay talks. An 18% decline in basic pay is making many council employees feel seriously undervalued
As local government workers donned their waders on Friday to rescue and support communities hit by tempestuous weather, the Local Government Employers exacerbated the storm by pulling out of a meeting with UNISON, GMB and Unite at which they were due to respond to our 2014-2015 National Joint Council pay claim.
The ‘good news’ - we were told by phone - was that 1.5 million council workers and school support staff would get a pay offer (eventually). The ‘bad news’ was that the employers wanted to hear what the new National Minimum Wage would be before making that offer – and even then it was likely to fall within a 1% pay ‘envelope’. No meeting was therefore likely to take place until 1 May – ironically International Workers’ Day - and exactly one month after our members’ pay rise should be in their increasingly empty pockets.
The sheer inadequacy of a 1% pay ‘envelope’ with RPI at 2.7%, a drop in basic pay of 18% for all local government workers since 2010 and many additional local cuts to pay and conditions, would be bad enough. That the Local Government Employers didn’t consider it necessary to hold a meeting to discuss our claim and their likely response made matters worse. But the final straw was the clear message that pay for school support staff and council workers would now be benchmarked to the National Minimum Wage. On Friday afternoon the unions lodged a formal dispute with the Local Government Employers.
In case anyone is wondering, the NMW has been the legal minimum floor for basic hourly earnings across the UK since 1999. It therefore represents a pay level for the least skilled, least experienced, workers within our economy – even though many of the growing number of workers who find themselves paid it are worth considerably more. Until recent years, the NMW was never seen as an appropriate benchmark for school support and council jobs.
At the NMW’s inception, NJC hourly pay was almost a quarter higher. Since 2003, when the real decline in local government earnings began, there has been a steady fall in the ratio, until in 2012 the bottom NJC rate just hovered above the national minimum wage - and the LGE lopped off the bottom pay point to avoid falling below it.
The Great Local Government Pay Robbery broadly mirrors Conservative control of the Local Government Association, increased marketization, the Gershon Efficiency Review - and subsequent boasts that local government had made 50% more savings than required by New Labour’s efficiency regime. The local government workforce has long ceased to be a precious asset and instead has become the sector’s ‘efficiency saving’.
It has been drawn into the globalised economy’s race to the bottom in the pay and conditions stakes, with scant recognition of the critical value of our members’ work – and not just in flood zones. The coalition’s 43% cut in local government funding has – of course – piled on the pressure to slash and burn the worst pay and conditions in the public sector by miles.
The decline in the lowest pay rates is the more interesting for its coincidence with implementation of Single Status – the 1997 collective agreement which harmonised manual and white collar conditions and pay scales. More importantly, it also required individual councils to carry out pay and grading reviews to ensure that they were equal pay proofed. Its NHS equivalent Agenda for Change was government funded, while New Labour refused to fund equal pay in councils, many of which were reluctant to challenge discriminatory pay practices anyway. Some are yet to complete the exercise almost 45 years after the Equal Pay Act hit the statute books!
The consequence of the failure by councils and government to recognise the need to comply with the 1970 Equal Pay Act has been a £3 billion bill for local authorities in tribunal settlements and legal fees and the ludicrous spectre of Birmingham and others selling off large buildings to meet ongoing claims. Had £3 billion and the price of the National Exhibition Centre - about 15% of the current basic pay bill - been put into achieving decent and equal pay through collective bargaining, women’s pay at the lower end of local government would have risen as it should have done, not fall so sharply relative to economy-wide earnings. Instead, collective bargaining has all but
ground to a halt in the largest bargaining group in Western Europe.
It’s not clear whether the LGE is concerned that any offer it might make will under or over-shoot the NMW to take effect from October. (The latter is unlikely if 1% is all that’s on offer). The level will be announced between now and the local elections. Ironically the same Chancellor Osborne who recently espoused a £7 national minimum wage is the one who has slashed council funding, imposed a 1% public sector pay limit and denied 1 million local government workers the £250 paid to all other public sector workers earning less than £21,000 during the pay freeze of 2011-2013 – speeding up the 18% decline in their basic pay since 2010. The 43% council funding cuts have also driven the LGE to espouse more and more extreme attacks on local pay and conditions, meaning that sick pay and annual leave are now in the headlights, following a 3-year freeze on car allowances and a universal assault on unsocial hours payments and redundancy pay.
I recently wrote to the Chancellor to ask him if he would waive the 1% pay limit on local government workers and provide councils and schools with funds to allow the bottom rate to rise to the level of a £7 NMW. I also sent research for UNISON by the New Policy Institute which shows that 55% of the cost of our claim for £1.20 an hour for all school and council workers would be met through increased tax and National Insurance ‘take’ and reduced spending on in-work benefits. It would deliver the Living Wage of £7.65 an hour for the lowest paid and start to restore lost earnings for everyone else.
I asked to meet him. More than two weeks later I received an e-mail telling me that my letter had been sent to DCLG as it was nothing to do with the Treasury. DCLG will of course say that it’s nothing to do with them as the LGE negotiates with the unions. The problem is that they don’t.
Our members are now beginning to say that they’d rather lose a few days’ pay and strike than lose more pay, paid leave and sick pay for evermore. More and more feel that strike action is the only way in which their crucial contribution is noticed. Who can blame them?
