Pay Cuts

[stanwee]

Hi, i have worked with my local council for 20 years and as many people will know recently an exercise to rate or grade many jobs including my own was carried out and i am apparently overpaid for the job i do by £479. Obviously it would appear that i am being overpaid but to get to my current level of pay is only due to annual national agreed rises i have been entitled to during my time of employment, am i wrong in thinking that for that reason my present wage is justified ?

 

Recently all employees affected including myself have met with management to discuss our salaries and options available to address the gap in our pay. Here is the problem i have, many employees have been given the opportunity of working an extra half hour/ hour per week to bridge the gap and in a lot of cases their pay will increase but the only option myself and others have been offered is to surrender 9 days holiday to keep our present salary or retain the 9 days holiday but have our salaries reduced.

 

I don't believe this to be fair, do i have any rights to be given the same option of working additional time as others have been offered ?

 

Perhaps i should also mention that a few years ago i was advised by my manager that i was advised to do extra tasks/courses to protect my salary as it was mentioned that the situation i find myself in now could arise, i complied and have completed the 3 tasks/ courses that i was asked to do.

[Sidewinder]

This sort of thing is happening at local authorities everywhere as they are trying to slash budgets. It is impossible to comment too much on your situation without knowing a lot more about how they are consulting with you and the amount of notice they are giving.

 

The point about consultation is that it should give you every opportunity to discuss changes and to negotiate where possible, so highlighting any extra skills or service awards where this has added increments to your existing salary may be relevant. Changes made to other peoples' roles may well be different to your own situation if they are different jobs - the needs may be different - but again, have you put the suggestion to the employer that you might be willing to work extra time?

 

You say that they are proposing losing 9 days holiday - I presume that this would be contractual holiday rather than reducing the 28 days that you would be entitled to by law? If so, then having so much annual holiday would be an obvious area to reduce without it actually affecting your income - the public who receive services from councils are increasingly questioned such entitlements as being over-generous, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case.