More than one hundred B&NES Council workers will have their pay frozen for three years under a new pay structure, but a potential reduction in pay for 16 workers in June has been averted.
The Guildhall in Bath
The council’s employment committee approved the council’s new pay structure on Wednesday 14th May, which has been criticised by trade union Unison, some opposition councillors, and some staff for dropping pay for 106 roles at the council.
The pay structure will also mean a pay rise for 62% of the council’s 3,500 staff, and the 106 people facing pay cuts would have their pay frozen for three years under the council’s pay protection policy.
People in roles with pay cuts will still get the increase set to be agreed under the national pay award before their pay is frozen. The pay protection will last for three years from 1st June.
But if the new lower pay level for the role increases to more than the level a council worker’s pay was frozen at, they will be paid the higher wage.
A council statement said: “At the end of that period, it is possible no individual will see an overall reduction in pay.”
But there is no guarantee workers will not see their pay go down in cash terms at the end of the three years.
The council’s director of people and change, Cherry Bennett, who is one of the 106 people affected, told the committee that the council would work with affected staff on how they could progress their careers and qualify for pay rises before the end of the three years.
The pay protection policy would originally have lasted for two years, but was extended to three years after an agreement with trade unions. The amount the council had planned to pay out as pay protection had originally been limited to 10% of the new lower salary.
But this meant that 16 council workers, for whom the pay for their role was going down by more than this amount, faced having their pay frozen below their current salary from 1st June.
Chairing the employment committee, Toby Simon (Bathwick, Liberal Democrat) called for the 10% limit to be dropped to “make sure that nobody loses out, at least in cash terms”.
The change was agreed by the committee. But freezing pay at the same level for three years is likely to be a pay cut in “real terms”, meaning that inflation will effectively make the frozen salaries worth less over time.
The 106 council workers affected by the decision include about a third of the IT department.
One council IT worker told the Local Democracy Reporting Service before the meeting: “It’s gutting.” Another said they felt “devalued”. Unison had rejected the plans in a consultative ballot.
A further 245 council workers in the passenger transport and waste and recycling departments could also face pay cuts when the proposals for those departments are implemented separately in the next three months.
Unison believes the pay cut might be intended to help the council avoid an equal pay claim. The council recently brought some adult social care contracts in-house, meaning that a low-paid, predominantly female workforce has TUPEd (transferred under protected employment) to the council.
Councils can face equal pay claims when men are paid more than women for doing jobs which are considered equivalent.
The proposed pay cuts are in departments which are predominantly male. Council social worker and Unison activist Toni Mayo told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “As a woman and a social worker, I don’t want equal pay to be addressed by men being paid less. We want women to be paid more.”
The pay restructure is the first at the council for ten years and is part of the major “Being Our Best” programme. Council chief executive Will Godfrey told the committee: “Whenever you try to change anything, clearly there are implications.” But he insisted: “Fairness is a very important part of it.”
The new pay structure makes a number of changes across where the different pay grades are, and which roles are paid at each grade.
Some staff at the top level of pay will see their pay decrease because their pay grade has been moved to a lower value. But lower-paid staff are affected because their roles have been moved down a pay grade.
He said: “I think morally it’s right, as head of the paid service, that we implement a pay rise for 60% of people.”
He said: “You can say a lot of things in terms of headlines. Clearly there’s a lot of detail behind the proposals we have put forward.”
Mr Simon said he had been involved on both sides of public sector pay discussions for 50 years. He said he was happy to accept the officers’ recommendation to approve the new pay structure. The committee approved it unanimously.
The Labour opposition group on Bath & North East Somerset Council said on Tuesday that it had held “urgent discussions” with trade unions, the council leader, and the council’s chief executive.
It echoed trade union Unison’s call for the decision to be made by a full meeting of the whole council, not the three-member employment committee.
The plan had also been criticised by the three independent councillors who formed the Independents for B&NES group on Bath & North East Somerset Council last month, who called for the council to give the council workers a pay rise.
The Greens have been the most recent to criticise the plans, writing to the council leader and chief executive and issuing a statement before the meeting where Green group leader Joanna Wright said: “These changes hurt the very people who keep our council running. It’s unjust—and it must be paused and given greater oversight.”
The new pay structure will come into effect from 1st June.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
