Issue - meetings

This paper presents Members with a report on the progress of the pay negotiations for the financial year 2017/2018.

Discussion:

The Chief People Officer introduced a report which covered the progress on the annual pay negotiations with the trade unions for the financial year 2017/2018.

Unison had submitted a pay claim on 3 November asking for a 3% consolidated increase on all salary points and allowances and a minimum wage of £10 per hour. The Chief People Officer advised that the protocol for pay negotiations stipulated that a joint claim from Unison and GMB should be submitted in October and as there was as yet no claim from GMB  there was not yet a joint claim from the Unions. The cost of implementing the Unison pay claim equated to £2.5m excluding on costs, equivalent to adding a further 3.1% to the current pay bill.

A supplementary report had also been circulated updating Members on the increases to the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage announced in the Government’s Autumn Budget Statement, which would take effect from 1 April 2017.

A Member referred to comments made earlier at the Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) by Trade Union representatives about the impact on the morale of staff as a result of on-going pay restraint. As reference had been made at the JCC meeting to some of the results of the recent staff survey, it was requested that the full results of the survey should be provided to the Committee. A request was made for information about areas where the Council was experiencing difficulties in recruiting staff and also how many staff, in relation to the total number of staff, had benefited in pay and non pay terms from the Medpay PDR awards. The point was made that some Members did not support the current system whereby the pay award included both the cost of living increase and performance related pay and believed these should be treated as separate issues. The Chief People Officer undertook to provide the information requested for the next meeting.

Decision:

The Committee agreed to note the report.