Agenda item

Discussion:

The Assistant Director, Organisational Services introduced this report which  covered the progress on the annual pay negotiations with the trade unions and made recommendations to full Council for the payment of an annual cost of living award and performance related payments.

The Trade Union pay claim was in two parts:

Claim 1: That Medway Council recognises and commits to the National Living Wage for all council employed staff.

Claim 2: An across the board pay increase of 2.3% (current RPI).

The pay claim had been discussed with the trade unions at the meetings of the Joint Consultative Committee held on 21 and 28 January 2015.

Tabled at the meeting was a paper giving details of information requested at the meeting of the Joint Consultative Committee held on 21 January 2015. This covered comparative information about staff turnover and salaries and also the variance between current range 1 entry salary with the national minimum wage rate and the implications of increasing the lowest salary to point 8 (£13,189) and how this compared to the minimum wage.

The Assistant Director advised that the council were unlikely to be able to offer any more than a 1% increase to the current bill (a budget increase of around £800,000). The Trade Unions had been invited to consider the split of the 1% between a cost of living increase and performance pay and to consider improvements to non-pay elements of the employee remuneration package. The proposal from the Council was that of the possible £800,000 available, 60% would be allocated to cost of living and 40% to performance. The cost of introducing the Living Wage was £324,000 pa, involving 379 employees.

A member commented that the position of the Labour Group was that the Council should agree a 1% cost of living pay increase with no performance pay element and that the Council should also commit to the Living Wage, at a total cost of £1.124m. For a relatively small extra investment, the Council could help a large number of employees and also send out a message that the Council cared about its staff. He argued that the authority could afford to pay the Living Wage and noted that many others facing similar financial difficulties had agreed to this.  It was time to reflect on the concerns raised by the trade unions and employees and recognise that years of pay restraint had affected morale and this inevitably had an effect on services to the public. The proposal to award a 0.6% cost of living increase represented a miniscule sum.

In response to a question from a member, the Assistant Director advised there were less than 100 employees who were engaged under nationally negotiated terms and conditions of employment and entitled to receive pay increases and automatic incremental pay progression. The cost of this was around £40-50,000 pa and this sum would be met from the proposed £800,000.

The Committee were advised that removing the lowest pay point would affect around 300 employees and would cost approximately £35,000 – again this would need to be met from the £800,000 available.

In response to a question about numbers of redundancies the Assistant Director advised that in the last 18 months there had been 56 redundancies (both compulsory and voluntary) out of 426 people at risk of redundancy.

A member then moved that full Council be recommended to allocate £800,000 to pay rises, to be distributed in accordance with paragraph 4.2. of the report and that, further, the lowest salary point be removed. This was put to the vote and carried. Councillors Paul Godwin and Christine Godwin requested that their votes against the motion be recorded.

Decision:

The Committee recommended to full Council that £800,000 be allocated to pay rises and that this is distributed in accordance with paragraph 4.2 of the report, i.e. 60% allocated to cost of living and 40% to performance, and that, also, the lowest salary point be removed.