22 July 2009
Caerphilly county borough council has almost concluded a major pay review to ensure thousands of staff, ranging from refuse collectors to social workers, get a fairer deal.
The authority is implementing complex job evaluation and equal pay proposals to ensure all staff receive appropriate pay to match their jobs and fair conditions of employment.
Council deputy leader, Cllr Allan Pritchard, said "Concerns that we could receive an enormous number of claims and disputes over job evaluation and single status have been unfounded. In fact, we are leading the way in local government in the way the whole situation has been managed with employees and the unions. Our workforce now has a robust pay structure, which standardises all job contracts across the entire organisation and is equal and fair to all.
Only 292 claims have been made which means that these should be able to be processed very quickly. The council took the decision earlier this year which meant most of the lowest paid workers in the council, usually women in part time positions, would benefit the most.
The whole Job Evaluation process has taken in excess of two years to reach this conclusion and the entire process has been agreed with the Trade Unions.
More than three quarters of the staff balloted by the three trade unions supported the proposals, but we always anticipated that there would be appeals, and this is to be expected in such a complex process. A dedicated team of employees are in place to deal with these appeals quickly, which number just under 300.
The results of the Job Evaluation proposals saw 48% of staff receiving an increase; 39% of staff are unaffected and only 13% of staff will see any decrease in their earnings. To protect this minority we have put in place various measures to ensure that no immediate financial impacts are felt for a further 3-year period.
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