Well her we go again
Birmingham City Council has issued The GMB with the Section 188 for the financial year 2016/17.
We are dismayed to see that a further 1347 of our colleagues have been identified as being at risk of being made redundant or being subject to a TUPE situation where their service area could be placed into the hands of private companies!
In addition the council are attacking our hard won Terms & Conditions with their proposals, these are;
- Increase the standard working week to 37 hours. In reality this a cut in the hourly pay rate, which could disproportionately affect part time workers with their take home pay reducing, unless they increase their hours, pro-rata?
- Reduce Occupational Sick pay to a maximum of 3 months full pay and 3 months half pay. This is a Nationally agreed T&C,
- Cease paying employees for the first 3 days of each period of sickness absence. This is a Nationally agreed T&C
- Freeze the payment of performance related increments for 3 years. This is for years 2017/18, 18/19 and 19/20. After the PDR system proved to be more advantageous to employees of higher grades, with proportionately much less lower grade colleagues receiving incremental rises, the change to My Appraisal, although untested was welcomed. This proposal is a real kick in the teeth for all our members, as their continued high performance will be expected but with no reward, financial or otherwise!
- To remove subsistence allowance for those away on business.
- To reduce the hours that are paid at night rate (standard time plus 1/3rd), from 8pm – 6am, to 10pm – 6am
- To have one standard standby payment of £27.35 per session
- The complete removal of the Flexi-scheme. This wonderful proposal by the City Council is going to have a massive detrimental effect upon all those employees with caring responsibilities or other commitments who utilize the Flexi-scheme to manage their Work – Life Balance
- DBS (Disclosure and Barring) Update Service. Introduce a £13 annual charge to keep the DBS certificate up to date for each individual employee whom needs one. How perverse to charge employees to keep their DBS up to date, when the vast majority of colleagues only need this to complete the job they are doing for the council. So you will be paying the council to be allowed to work for them!
- JNC Officers. The Council intends to carry out a full pay and terms & conditions review for all Chief Officers.
Consultation on all of these proposals is due to start soon and we intend to keep members updated on the proposals as they develop, including offering members meetings in the new year to discuss these issues and their implications.
You can be assured that The GMB B01 Forward branch will continue to represent our members individually and collectively, to both protect jobs and our terms and conditions.
Posted: 22nd December 2015