£100million County pay talks are madness

The equal pay talks going on at County probably sound pretty dull and boring but read on and learn why the latest agreement with unions by Labour’s John Taylor, the County Council Leader, equates to well over £300 for every single household in Staffordshire.

It’s formal name is Job Evaluation and it’s about to cost Staffordshire tax payers over £100million. It is the result of one of the first bits of policy brought in by the Labour Government in 1997. The principle of the legislation, which is fine, is to try and ensure that employees in the public sector, such as the County Council or Lichfield District Council, are paid on an equal basis.

For instance, a telephone operator and someone in the parks department may both deal with the public and so have similar responsibility… it’s about making sure there’s an equality of pay between completely different jobs within an Authority where there are similar levels of work and responsibility.

So, in principle, fine and fair. Lichfield DC did their JE about 5 years ago, before my time, and the total cost was about £230k. Now I accept that Lichfield DC is tiny compared to the County (about 500 employees whilst County has 34,000) but where Labour, under pressure from unions, are taking the County pay talks is utterly mad and completely unaffordable.

Because unions have got cleverer with JE and the County, under Labour, have increased employee numbers by a staggering 46% over the past few years, Labour’s approach of wait and see is about to cost us all dear. If they’d got their act together and done JE when Lichfield did it the cost to County tax payers would have been around £10million. Still a lot of money but a pittance when you look at the County’s total expenditure.

Where are we now then? Ok…. About 18 months ago they finally got around to starting this JE process knowing that it had to be finished and in place by law very soon. One of my favourite straplines from the ‘05 County elections springs to mind…. ‘LAST MINUTE LABOUR’. Anyway, the work undertaken to assess jobs resulted in a proposal from Labour at the back end of last year which would have done the job and cost tax payers around £30million.

Under that proposal the assessments suggested that 25% of staff were being paid too much, 30% were about right and 45% deserved more. The 25% who would end up with a pay reduction were, however, being given protection against a salary reduction for 3 years…. 100% of existing salary in the first year after JE, 90% in the second and 80% in the third.

Those who were deemed to be worth a pay increase would also get the extra pay backdated for three years. Now we, as Conservatives, had a bit of an issue with that but also a difficult line to tread. I certainly wouldn’t want to see someone turn up for work at the County on a Monday finding they were earning £5000 a year less than they were the previous week. That really wouldn’t be fair.

My view is, perhaps, 2 years pay protection maximum, and actually I’d have thought most people should be able to find an alternative (particularly in the world of government) job within a year if they were unhappy with the deal. Conversely, if I turned up on that Monday morning and was told I’d got an extra £5000 a year I think I’d be pretty pleased so I had a real problem with the idea of employees agreeing to work previously for a mutually agreed amount of money and yet under the JE scheme get an out of the blue increase backdated for three years.

Well that was then and this is now. Labour are proposing a new deal because the unions didn’t think the old one was good enough. Instead of £30million it’s now going to cost tax payers in Staffordshire over £100million. Instead of 45% up, 30% the same and 25% down the latest deal sees 70% getting more money, 20% no change and 10% going down. The new terms also see three years of 100% protection of salary and, wait for it, not three years of back dated pay but a tidy four years.

I believe the £30million scheme was generous but, on the whole, just about acceptable. The new deal is not! It is a windfall, a cash bonanza for the unions and most employees and a really bad deal for council tax payers. Instead of simply ensuring equality and fairness in pay it has crept into the realms of almighty pay negotiations. Labour have collapsed and given in to pressure. Yes to fair and equitable pay, no to a tax payers’ rout, which is what this is.

We are robustly opposing this but I fear Labour will plough on with it. After all they aren’t going to defy the unions are they? The financial position at the County is going from bad to worse, hence the sale of farms, the rushed premature closure of care homes and the decimation of the County Youth Service. And there will be more to come.

I don’t often say this quite so overtly but, tell people about this, make sure others understand how bad it is and will get. In 2009 there will be County elections. Labour will have been in power in Staffordshire for 28 years. It’s definitely time for change.

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