By Richard Johnstone | 26 September 2014
A pay offer that would have given council workers a 2.2% increase over 15 months was put before unions in return for them abandoning next month’s strike action, the Local Government Association has revealed.
In a letter to council chief executives and finance directors, Sarah Messenger, the LGA’s head of workforce, said that the deal was conditional on the unions – Unison, the GMB and Unite – calling off a one-day strike planned for October 14.
Under the proposals for what Messenger called a ‘long-term deal’, the pay agreement would run from January 1 next year to March 31 2016 instead of being backdated to April.
Most council employees would have received a 2.2% pay increase, while those in the bottom six pay scales would have received more to set a new minimum hourly rate of £7 per hour. This would have risen further to £7.06 per hour in October 2015 by the removal of the lower pay grade, SCP5.
In addition, non-consolidated lump sum payments of between £100 and £325 would be made at all pay grades.
Messenger said that the ‘continuing proximity of the National Minimum Wage [which will rise to £6.50 on October 1] to the bottom pay point in local government does not sit easily with the national employers, which is why we have tried to think imaginatively about the shape of this proposal’.
She added: ‘However, we have been doing this in the context of unprecedented pressures on the sector’s finances and therefore trying hard to strike a fair balance between doing the right thing by employees and not making worse councils’ financial positions.’
Although the GMB and Unite had said they would have been prepared to call off the strike action, Unison was not prepared to put the proposal to its wider membership.
‘This situation is enormously frustrating and highlights the failure of Unison’s national leadership and activists to approach national negotiations in a strategic way with a view to the medium and longer-term,’ Messenger said.
‘They have, we believe, done a great disservice to the overwhelming majority of their ordinary members by not allowing them to make up their own minds on the details of the revised pay proposal.’
A Unison spokeswoman told Public Finance it was not commenting on the letter.
Unite national officer for local government, Fiona Farmer said: 'Unite and the other local government unions are meeting the employers, the Local Government Association on Thursday, 2 October to respond to the new set of proposals that the LGA has put forward.
'Unite won’t be commenting further until after Thursday’s meeting.'
