Proposals for a new pay agreement for Dudley Council staff have been approved at a meeting of the cabinet for submission to trade unions.
Cabinet approved the offer of a new single pay and grading structure at the council which will now be issued to regional trade union officers in order to seek a collective agreement.
If the proposals are agreed, the council aims to implement new pay arrangements by April 2012.
The proposed pay agreement, which could still be subject to change, would at implementation, see just under half (47 per cent) of the council’s 9,000 staff covered by the agreement, maintain the same basic pay with 38 per cent seeing an increase and 14 per cent at risk of reduction.
Council bosses will now hold one-to-one discussions with employees who are facing a potential reduction of 15 per cent or more in basic pay to check that the information the council has is correct and give them an early opportunity to appeal against the outcome of the job evaluation process.
This applies to around 40 to 50 individual job roles which represents less than four per cent of employees covered by the single status agreement.
Councillor Les Jones, leader of the council, said:
“This has been a long process and we have looked to ensure the pay proposals are fair and equal. Inevitably with this kind of process there have to be changes but we will be working closely with staff the potentially worse affected staff to review their job evaluations.
“Trade union representatives are now examining the proposals with their national colleagues and taking their own legal and equality advice before deciding whether they are willing to ballot their membership.”
If trade unions agree to ballot members on the proposals, the council anticipates that all staff will be notified of the impact of final proposals by the end of October.
All councils must complete a single status review. It is shorthand for the National Joint Council (NJC) Agreement between Local Government Employers (LGE) and the trade unions (UNISON, GMB, UNITE).
The purpose of the agreement is to harmonise terms and conditions between manual workers and staff.
