Richard Baum

The last few weeks in the world of Bury Council have been dominated by the issue of job evaluation / equal pay. As a result of an exercise in job evaluation designed to iron out pay inequalities, lots of Council staff face cuts in salaries. For some the cuts are more than 40% of their wage, a vastly unjust wage cut in anybody’s book. But at the same time, lots of staff are gaining, and the cost to the Council of paying for the entire process £7m+ in time-limited pay protection, fees and officer time.

The exercise has been extremely controversial, and like all Councillors I have had dozens of letters from staff set to lose out. My heart goes out to them, and my will is set to try and see a way out of this that ensures fairness and doesn’t cripple the Council financially.

The plans for re-grading of posts are currently out to consultation. My views on “consultation” are jaded to say the least, after exercises of that name have turned out to be nothing of the sort in the past. I only hope that all sides use the time set aside to really consult everyone and try to come to a consensus view.

As local leaders we Councillors need to be careful not to take the easy road and make political points out of this. I was very disappointed to read local MP David Chaytor try to pin the blame for this on the Conservative Council. Retorts from the Tories that Labour sat on the problem for years are equally irritating. These games make politicians look like children and, worse, they do nothing at all to help the dedicated staff of the Council who are threatened with serious financial hardships.

It is easy and natural to try and find somebody to blame for this. And that time may yet come. But it isn’t now. Whilst it’s true that the letters of information arrived at the weekend, and whilst the Council might not have been crystal clear with some of their briefings, these are not the issues which will be important in the final reckoning. We should not lose sight of the the bigger picture by focusing on these small points.

The reasons for the current situation are many and varied. We could blame the managers and leaders of yesteryear for setting up unequal pay in the first place. We could blame the Unions for doing nothing for so long and then supporting a process before opposing its results. We could blame the government for passing laws without thinking through their consequences. We could blame lawyers for being greedy. We could blame judges for interpreting the law without taking a broader view. We could blame the Council leaders, we could blame the officers, we could blame ourselves for letting this injustice go on for so long. I don’t think we should blame anybody at the moment. Hard working public servants should not have their financial security threatened in this way, and instead of looking to blame, all sides should consider how well-meaning measures have been used to create such a plainly unfair outcome, to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

And, in seeking to blame people now, whilst the issue is so raw and still undecided, we might risk ignoring real ways to try and get ourselves out of this predicament.

What we should be doing is looking forward. The Council’s leaders should be looking far and wide across the country to see how other Council’s have handled this situation. And if there is no other way for Bury within the law, then we should be looking at ways to make any wage cuts as bearable as possible for those involved, and thus minimise the potential damage to the Council, its staff and the people of Bury. That is what the Conservative Council has to do now. If they fail in it, they can be justly blamed. If they succeed, we should congratulate them. And as an opposition member it is my job to make sure that they’re doing it properly.

There is an appeals process, and we need to make it as transparent as possible. We need staff adequately represented, and we need to give them access to as much information as they want. If it’s inconvenient or it takes a bit longer, then so be it. We need to make sure that the appeals process is scrutinsed properly, and that it takes into account every stage in the evaluation process. We need to make sure that appeals take into account individual jobs, rather than job families. Again, the time to blame those leading the Council will be if and when they fail to do this.

And where, after a fair and open appeals process, people still lose out financially, we need to put in place every support mechanism possible to minimise damage to them and the Council’s services. That means supporting staff in training and development, re-examining job roles and team structures to take advantage of “natural wastage” through retirements and resignations so that people who remain suffer as little loss as possible.

I am glad that some of these steps are being considered now. But not enough of them are, and it is up to the Conservative Council to make more of them happen. The blame game has led to suspicion and almost open warfare between staff, unions, MPs and the Council itself at a time when we should be coming together for the good of everyone. Unions threatening strike action is understandable. But the Unions backed the scheme originally, and they should join with the officers and leaders of the council and finding a way out of this mess we’re all in.

In the end it will be the Council’s Executive that take the final decision. If that decision is arrived at without exploring every avenue to make it as equitable as possible to all concerned, then the Conservative Council should rightly take the blame. At the moment though, shouting at them rather than railing against the flaws in this process does the staff of Bury Council no good at all. 

Rick