Poor relations working for the council

GMB pay claimbriefing 2002: 1,750 or 6%

Over a quarter of a million 280,000 council workers still earn less than 5 an hour. Thats over a fifth of theentire workforce. Most of them are part-time women.

Council workers are under greaterpressure than ever before to deliver better services and better value formoney. Yet they are the poor relations when it comes to pay rates, and toGovernment allocation of extra resources. Their pay has fallen behind the restof the economy including the rest of the public sector. As a consequence thereis a growing crisis of low morale and high staff turnover. The improvements tocouncil services which the public want cannot be delivered in this climate.

Lowpay

Front-line council services rely on thecommitment of low-paid part-time women. Yet poverty wages mean they are beingincreasingly attracted away by major retailers and leisure industry employerswho offer more money, more training and less stressful working conditions. Acute housing shortages have put thespotlight on authorities like Reading but the recruitment difficulties theyreport are a common experience up and down the country:

The situation is even more difficultwith home helps than social workers. We pay 6 an hour for people to look afterthe elderly and all their personal problems yet the shopping centre is payingshop assistants 7 an hour[1].

A survey by Incomes Data Services saysthat over 90% of local authorities are experiencing recruitment and retentiondifficulties, and a fifth are particularly struggling to fill low-paid jobssuch as care staff, cleaners and catering staff[2].

In his Budget Report for 2001, theChancellor announced that the basic credit in Working Families Tax Credit givesa minimum income guarantee of 225 a week for a family with one member working35 hours a week. Over 600,000 workers in local government are on salaries thatdeliver an equivalent full-time weekly rate lower than that. Someone workingfull-time on the lowest local government grade is nearly 47 a week short ofthis guarantee leading to the ludicrous situation whereby the state asprovider of social security is subsidising the state as employer.

Our claim sets out to alleviate low payand to bridge the gap with the minimum income guarantee. Thats why we want aflat-rate increase of 1,750 which will deliver a minimum salary of 11,017equivalent to 211.87 a week for a full-time worker.

Fallingbehind

Local public service is a peoplebusiness. The quality of local government performance depends on those who dothe job[3] so say the local government employers.

Yet every time those people open theirpay packets they are reminded that their pay is still low, unfair and unequal. The employers admit that local government earnings havelagged behind whole economy earnings every year since 1992[4]. Councillors have awarded themselves average increases inallowances of 1,250pa. MPs have voted themselves a staged 8% pay increasesince the June 2001 election. Health workers, teachers, police and others haveconsistently had better pay increases than local government workers in recentyears. And there is also a concerted national effort to provide them with arange of pay additions and support with housing and childcare.

Our claim for 6% would mean localgovernment workers could start to catch up.

Waiting for equal pay

Civil Service departments and agenciesare finally serious about tackling equal pay. They are agreeing generous annualpay settlements, many between 5% and 8%: to deal with two dominant issues: payprogression and equal pay.[5]Yet it is local government which has the biggest equal pay problem. Accordingto the Kingsmill report on equal pay:

Each of the public services has its own history in terms of payand employment practices and the extent to which women are concentrated inparticular occupations at lower grades. Thisis especially true for local government employers.[6]

Our low paid women members are fed upwith waiting for equal pay. Our claim for a bottom-loaded settlement of 1,750targets low-paid women. It would be a leap forward towards the goal of equalpay and it would provide a platform for full implementation of the singlestatus agreement.

Poor relations

The Government recognises thatmodernising public sector pay structures requires extra funds. It is fundingthe Agenda for Change pay reforms in the NHS, the performance-related payscheme for teachers, and a 50 million fund for modernising pay in furthereducation.

Yet its a different story when itcomes to local government. When the local government single status agreementwas agreed three years ago it was hailed as a model of social partnership andmodernisation by Government ministers, including Ian McCartney, then at the DTI.But the Government has refused financial support to local authorities who areseeking to implement it. As a consequence, only 17% of authorities have so farbeen able to introduce a new single status pay structure, and most of those aredistrict councils.

Fair funding

We recognise that local government,like public transport, has been starved of funds in recent years ever thepoor relation compared to the health service. The Government has only begun toaddress this slowly and selectively. The benefits to be reaped from moresustainable funding are immediately obvious. It is no coincidence that thegreatest performance improvements identified by the Audit Commission are ineducation and social services the very services which have benefited from ring-fencedgrants, taking the lions share of any extra resources which have gone intolocal government.

Nevertheless,this years financial settlement for local government was 7.4% up on last year. This is a better settlement than there has been inmany years. It is a golden opportunity for local government employers to arrestthe decline in council workers pay, living standards and morale. To do sowould put local government on course to deliver high quality local services andfulfil its community leadership role, tackling social exclusion and promotingprosperity. And that would strengthen its hand in future negotiations withcentral Government as it seeks to move from poor relation to favoured friend.

[2] Incomes DataServices, Pay in the Public services, 2001/2002

[3] EmployersOrganisation for Local Government, Best value and HR toolkit, 2001

[4] EmployersOrganisation for Local Government, Local Government Pay Claim 2002/3: Analysis

[6] Denise Kingsmill,Review of Womens Pay and Employment, December 2001