Council workers may strike over “single status”
Letters were sent out to Argyll and Bute Council employees last week detailing proposals for a new pay and grading structure as a result of Single Status.
Single Status is a national agreement reached in 1999 aimed at removing inequality in the pay and conditions of council employees.
The agreement proposes to give almost half of the council’s 4,350 staff a wage rise while cutting the pay of 23% of employees.
It was drawn up between all Scottish councils and local authority trade unions and recognises the need to modernise and improve services and to introduce a fair, non discriminatory grading structure, getting rid of the old distinctions between APT&C staff and manual workers which resulted in the unequal treatment of employees and harmonise conditions of service.
However, council staff affected by the sweeping changes to jobs, pay and conditions in Argyll and Bute could walk out on strike, a union boss warned.
Argyll and Bute Council agreed to go out to consultation with staff and unions, over a proposal to cut 140 jobs over the next three years, to help fund the new national Single Status pay agreement.
The council, along with all other Scottish local authorities, has been working for seven years to put this agreement into practice.
A job evaluation scheme was agreed by employers and trade unions at a national level. This scheme provides a common method for evaluating posts.
The job evaluation exercise was undertaken, affecting all 4,350 employees, 650 occupations and three sets of conditions of service. This has resulted in a ranking order for all affected jobs in the council. However, the job evaluation scheme only provided a ranking for jobs, ie, how they sit in relation to each other.
The Pay and Grading Steering Group, which involves representatives from both management and trade unions, has considered over 80 models. They have had to take into account a variety of factors including the need to provide equal pay structures for the workforce, the ability of the council to recruit and retain a workforce which will deliver the council’s priorities to an appropriate standard, and the question of affordability.
With the ranking order in place, it was then up to the council to decide on which proposed pay and grading model to take forward for consultation.
The pay and grading of senior management were dealt with in two stages, with restructuring in 1997/98 and in 2002/03. Teachers’ pay and conditions were dealt with under the McCrone settlement.
Of the jobs affected, 1366 are unaffected in terms of pay, 1985 will see an increase, and 996 will see a decrease after a three-year freeze.
The proposals are now out for consultation with both individual employees and trade unions. Staff should have received letters this week, outlining how the new deal affects them individually and they will have until April 6 to lodge individual job evaluation appeals, while the consultation on pay and conditions ends on May 29.
Donald Brown, chairman of the council’s branch of Unison, which with 1,700 members is the Argyll authority’s biggest union, has concerns however.
He said: “Unison’s intention is to ballot its membership on the proposals after the council decision, which is due to be made in June, and if the ballot was to reject the proposals there would be some form of industrial action - although I am not prepared to say, at this stage, what form of industrial action that would be.” But he confirmed: “One of the alternatives that would be considered is strike action.”
“We agree with the methodology used, however we have not agreed to the pay and grading structure. We are, and will continue to consult with our members during this discussion stage.”
The union is to hold a series of meetings and roadshows to discuss the proposals with staff prior to the consultation response deadline. But Mr Brown claims staff numbers at the council are already at a “critical” level without taking into account the proposal to axe a further 140 jobs.
He said: “Our view is that it’s at a critical level because many staff are working more than their 35 or 37 hours now, without making overtime claims. Many employees are working till six or seven o’clock at night and people are taking work home with them.”
He warned the council’s service to the public will suffer and added that remaining staff should not be expected to do their own job, plus that of another person.
Affected posts are still to be identified but compulsory redundancies would be a last resort, with the council aiming to achieve the reduction by natural wastage, when people retire and by not filling vacant posts.
The jobs reduction would be across council departments but Mr Brown pointed out that a separate review of the council’s social work department is already causing concern to staff.
Mr Brown added that some staff could find themselves getting worse conditions, in areas such as lower mileage rates, lunch allowances and overtime payments.
He said the three main council unions, Unison, Transport and General Workers and the GMB had all told the council that they do not find the proposals acceptable as they stand.
The Single Status exercise is the outcome of a national agreement and the implementation of a national job evaluation framework and the aim of the exercise was to address equality issues and to deal with historic imbalance in levels of pay.
James McLellan, the council’s chief executive, said: “The council has put forward a proposed package which addresses the equality issues and strikes a fair balance among competing pressures.
“This has been an intensive exercise over the last few years to bring former manual “blue collar” and “white collar” workers within a single set of terms and conditions and pay model.
“Whilst for many employees the rate of pay will remain the same, there will be jobs where the rate of pay will increase and jobs where the rate of pay will reduce as a result of evaluation.
“In those cases where the rate of pay is reduced, there is provision for pay to be cash conserved for up to three years.
“Though in the nature of the exercise some employees will suffer a reduction in their wages, it is not a cost cutting exercise.
“The council recognises the workforce is its biggest asset and has made provision of an additional £1.6 million to assist in the funding of Single Status, with the balance of the additional costs being met by a reduction of 140 posts over three years.”
A reliable source within the council said that the move to single status had been greeted with considerable dismay among council staff.
The source said: “The cuts seem to be bearing unduly heavily at the bottom end of the pay league, and I’ve heard of some staff members on £16,000 are facing salary cuts of up to £2,500 when the new salary scales are implemented.
“I understand some staff have been so upset on hearing the news that they’ve gone home. People are having difficulty in grasping the logic of the whole excercise - especially in terms of how the job evaluation system works - for it seems to have thrown up a whole host of anomalies.
“It has certainly had a major - and very negative - impact on staff morale.”
In response to this claim, a council spokesperson said: “The biggest group of people losing out will be at the lower end of the pay scale simply because there are more people at this level. Please note, however, that not everyone at the lower end is suffering from a reduction in their salary.
“Although the biggest groups suffering are at the lower end, the greater individual losses will be incurred at higher levels with some losing between £4-5k”


Seagull Feast at St. Catherines
St. Catherine’s residents were shocked on Monday when huge numbers of small ‘shellfish’ were washed up - dead and dying - on the shores of Loch Fyne nearby.
The distressing sight was revealed after locals noticed frenzied seagull feeding activity at the water’s edge just to the North of the pier. On closer inspection, the sheer number of stranded animals was difficult to comprehend.
Local man Graham Thomas explained: “Observing the seabirds I could see that they were feeding on something - and thought that it must be something quite small as they were pecking at something in the water but this was not followed by a toss of the head and a gulp as a fish, say, went down head first.
“Later, at low tide, I went down to the shore and was shocked by what I found. The shore was strewn with hundreds and thousands of small shrimps or prawns.”
Speculation over the cause of this incident has focused on commercial trawling activity on the loch. It has been reported that a small trawler spent a number of days leading up to Monday working up and down Loch Fyne between St. Catherines and Inveraray. Marine scientists, however, have cast doubts on this theory.
The creatures involved have been identified by staff at the Fisheries Research Service, Aberdeen, as a swarm-forming zooplankton Meganyctiphanes norvegica, more commonly known as Northern Krill. These form dense ‘clumps’ in the open oceans, and have also been spotted in west coast sea lochs in dense enough swarms to register on sonar equipment.
Mike Dreuery, Inshore Fisheries Adviser with the Fisheries Research Service, said: “These animals move up and down the water column in swarms. The chances of this incident being the result of trawling activity is slight, in fact I would suggest that there is almost no chance of this being the cause.”
Scientists based at The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) Laboratory, Dunstaffnage, near Oban visited the site on Wednesday to collect samples for analysis.
Dr Mike Burrows of SAMS suggested an initial theory that there may have been a low oxygen event deep in the loch, and that the shrimps might have died as a consequence. Loch Fyne is 160m deep between St. Catherines and Inveraray, and recent heavy rains may have created a freshwater layer on the surface, isolating the deeper salty water and causing the bottom to go anoxic (no oxygen).
Other potential, but less likely, causes of large-scale losses are man-made environmental pollution and also natural toxins released from the seabed as a result of disturbance by storms.
Fishing boats from Tarbert, Campbeltown and elsewhere on this occasion may not be to blame, according to scientists. Local doubts may be more difficult to shake off, and suspicions remain among local residents that trawling played some part in the deaths of these and other sea creatures.
Graham Thomas continued: “Divers have told me that the trawls cause absolute mayhem on the bottom of the loch, ploughing a wide swathe through brilliantly-coloured sponges, sea squirts, feather starfish, brittle starfish and some very rare sea anemones. I am told that all of the Clyde sea lochs are nursery areas for a variety of fish species and representations have been made in the past that there should be a ban on trawling in these waters - for obvious reasons.”


MORE TENDER WOE
FOLLOWING seven years of fruitless traipsing between Edinburgh and Brussels by an assortment of transport ministers and MSPs bent on resolving the vexing question of the west coast ferry tenders, it transpires that they needn’t have bothered - for it was never in the remit of the Scottish Executive in the first place.
The process, which has gone seriously pear-shaped without apparently raising so much as a blush in the corridors of power in Edinburgh, was under the control of Whitehall all the time, according to an article in the Herald by the paper’s respected Highland correspondent, David Ross.
He also claims that the tender bid was pushed forward on the insistence of Whitehall, which never argued the case for exempting the Calmac routes from the tendering process.
However, the role of Whitehall in the process has been played down by Holyrood politicians, which is surprising, given the appalling muddle and cost - estimated at £17m - associated with the exercise.
Despite the opportunity to shift blame on to a Labour administration in Whitehall, the Liberal Democrats, who hold the transport brief in Holyrood, have chosen instead to blame EU rules.
The story was grist to the mill for opposition politicians, who were quick to take advantage of it.
Conservative MSP Jamie McGrigor accused the transport minister of “setting new levels for LibDem hypocrisy”.
He said: “After failing to stand up to Brussels when the EU first made their intentions for the ferry tendering process clear, the Minister is now simply trying to deflect criticism away from that failure.
“All we’ve seen is any competition driven away and Caledonian MacBrayne tendering unopposed for these vital lifeline ferry links.”
SNP MEP Alyn Smith said: “There is no excuse for the failure of Lib Dem and Labour politicians in Scotland to take the case to Brussels themselves.
“Back in 2005 the Commission confirmed to me that they had had little contact with the Scottish Executive or the UK.
The Executive, however, insisted they were in regular contact. Now we know otherwise.
“If the Department of Transport did stop the Executive taking action then we should be asking serious questions of Alastair Darling and Douglas Alexander who as Secretaries of State for Transport and Scotland were surely responsible.
“It’s another ferry tender fiasco from Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and even Tavish Scott’s diversion tactics can’t hide that”.


People services saved
Argyll and Bute Council has agreed to allocate an extra £187,000 to services for older people and an additional £255,000 for a range of community projects, including village halls.
At its 2007/08 Budget meeting, members also voted against proposals to axe school meals and any reduction in budget to support respite care for the elderly or those with mental health, physical or learning needs.
A total of £100,000 was also allocated for repairs to headstones in burial grounds across the area.
Argyll and Bute Council Leader, Councillor Allan Macaskill, said: “Every year at budget time we are faced with difficult decision-making and this year has been no exception.
“With this budget, we aim to maintain and improve the level and quality of services to those who are most vulnerable in our society.
“Increased efficiencies across the Council have allowed us to balance the books and make savings of £3,191,067, although we have had to draw on our reserves to meet the demands of the Single Status agreement.
“I am pleased that over the past four years as Leader of this administration we have been consistent in bringing in Council Tax at or below the Scottish average.”
The Council agreed to set the 2007/08 Council Tax for Band ‘D’ at £1,178, a rise of £22 which represents an increase of 1.9% over the 2006/7 figure.