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February 28, 2008
OUR INCREMENTS
All branches were asked by Napo HQ to seek a meeting with local board chairs to establish the area’s view on the payment of increments from 1st April in line with the pay agreement. This was in light of a statement made by the employer’s body, the PBA, that:
'The Employers have stated that their position was reached following consultation with representatives from all Probation Areas.'
We wrote to the chief officer in the first instance and he replied that it was his understanding that the last pay agreement was completed and the payment of contractual increments would be subject to the new pay negotiations. He said that HPA would be guided by the PBA.
We responded by saying that Napo's clear view is that all Areas should honour the last pay agreement. The chief officer was provided with the contents of the recent briefing paper from Napo which sets out in some detail why we assert that increments should be paid from this April and not to do so puts HPA in breach of the Pay Agreement that became effective in April 2005.’
This is how Napo sees the 2005 Agreement:
The NNC Agreement provides for a clear expectation on the part of employees that pay progression will form an ongoing and permanent feature of their pay arrangements. There is nothing in the Agreement suggesting that the current arrangements lapse after 31/3/08.
There are various references to increments in the Agreement as follows:
Para 3.4: “Within each pay band there are a number of pay points to allow pay progression in post(See Appendix C: NNC Salary Spines). Pay progression is applicable annually, on 1April.”
Para 4.7: “Pay progression, which is applicable annually on 1 April,…”
Para 4.11: “There will be a normal expectation of progression subject to satisfactory performance
Para 5.1: “There will be a common pay progression date of 1 April for all employees.”
There has been no specific response from the chief officer in relation to the above. We have been told, though, that the Board Chair, Mike Fisher, is unable to meet with this branch before the pay negotiations resume. Therefore, we can only conclude that HPA remains under the guidance of the PBA which in its turn reached its view on increments after consulting with all the areas. Ultimately this is about the employers making choices and at the moment they are choosing not to pay the increments. Wouldn’t it be justice if the unions chose to say the harmonisation of annual leave was part of the last pay agreement?
So that’s where we are at present.
Possible consequences for members:
Lower take home pay
Delaying the payment of this year’s increments will have a specific impact on lowering the take home pay of probation staff. The increased contributions to the Local Government Pension Scheme, worth between 0.5% and 0.8% for most staff, come into effect from 1 April. (This will average between £16 - £20 each month)
Breach of Good Faith
The Pay Modernisation Agreement introduced a new modernised package of pay and conditions that benefited the Employers as well as staff. Staff benefited from improved pay rates based on job evaluation, with many staff who had been previously on the maximum of their pay band having the opportunity to obtain a higher pay band maximum, albeit via incremental progression. The Employers benefited from the harmonised terms of conditions including the harmonisation of annual leave.
If the Employers at this stage threaten the integrity of the new pay bands by threatening incremental progression, then staff will rightly feel that the Employers have broken faith with them and with the spirit of the Agreement.
Morale
Probation staff are facing threats and change on many fronts. It is accepted by bodies such as the Probation Inspectorate and the National Audit Office that the Probation Service and its staff are working harder and more efficiently than ever.
The Employers are asked to consider the implications for morale if they, the staff’s own Employers, take the unprecedented step of holding back and implicitly threatening, staff’s annual increment. Such a step would clearly not be one that the Treasury had asked the Employers to take, but a step of their own volition.
Industrial Relations
We are hearing informed views that the harder line on automatic increments has been taken because of the new culture among the slimmed-down Boards, which comprise a higher ratio of members from the private sector. It’s difficult to think of a better strategy for the demotivation of staff. The calls for raising performance get louder, but concerns about the payment of salaries in line with the pay agreement does not bring about a meeting with the board chair or a clear statement from HPA as to where it stands on the payment of increments – in which direction is it seeking to influence the PBA is the unanswered question.
There will be more news after the 4th March which is when the unions and employers next meet.
Posted by Hampshire at February 28, 2008 03:26 PM