26 February 2007
We received a petition asking:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Ask Staffordshire County Council to drop their current plans for Job Evaluation in the County. Under current arrangements many staff will have their salaries slashed to the extent that it is morally incorrect."
Details of petition:
"Staffordshire County Council (SCC) are proposing to cut the salaries of staff after "job evaluation" interviews. This is to try and implement the Single Status Agreement. We support the single status agreement however, under the current arrangements many thousands of staff are being asked to accept pay cuts ranging from £1000-£12000 in monetary terms and between 10%-42% in percetage terms. We also have no confidence in the process as many employees were not interviewed as generic type responses were submitted. We also feel that many services to the public in Staffordshire will suffer as many dedicated and loyal employees will leave particularly, in schools. This in turn will harm the education of our children. We seek your support and want to petition the Prime Minister. Please also visit www.saveoursalary.org for more comments and views on this subject"
Read the Government’s response
The Government is fully committed to equality for all in the workplace, including the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. Equal pay is not a new pressure and many authorities have already implemented pay reviews following job evaluation exercises. We recognise that this is a difficult and costly process for some local authorities, but employers have been required to pay male and female workers equally since pay legislation came into force in 1975.
Central government has a limited role here as it was not party to either the Single Status agreement or the 2004 local government pay agreement, which were negotiated between local government employers collectively and the Unions. The timetable for pay and grading reviews was not imposed by central government but allowed local government to take account of affordability constraints.
This, of course, reflects the fact that the Government is not the employer. It is for local government to ensure that it implements pay reviews which remove discriminatory aspects of its pay structures and tackle equal pay proactively and in an affordable manner.