County’s workers….. a reprieve from pay cuts?

It is called Job Evaluation and it has caused massive unrest within the workforce of Staffordshire County Council. In 1997 Tony Blair’s government agreed with unions to implement equality of pay for similar jobs within public sector organisations.

Now, on the face of it that seems ok, and fair. In reality it has been difficult for most Authorities that have done it so far. In Staffordshire County Council, of course, it’s been even worse than that, a real nightmare. It’s true that re-assessing the jobs of the tens of thousands of employees at SCC is not easy but for a myriad of reasons it’s been badly handled by the Labour Party at the County. The extremes have been astonishing. Some people seeing salaries reduced by as much as £17k and many thousands more seeing big salary increases. The really really expensive bit for the tax payer would have been six years back pay for those whose salaries would go up and three years salary protection for those whose would go down. All in all, a mess.

So, for the time being, it’s been scrapped and everyone starts the process again. I understand (I’m trying to confirm but facts are not easy to come by on JE) the cost to the tax payer to date in trying to do this has been well over £3million. But even though that’s a disgrace, that’s not the worst of it.

To fund the pay deal that has just been scrapped was going to cost us all in Staffordshire a staggering £33million. I hope we are wrong but rumour has it that the next go at this by the Labour administration at the County could cost a whopping £60million. I’ve no idea where that amount would come from.

I say again, job evaluation has been difficult across the public sector but Labour in Staffordshire have really made a shambles of it big time. I’m sure I’ll be writing about their next go at it in due course!

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