Southampton council offering to reverse pay cuts
21 August, 2012
The first signs of austerity cuts reversal has come at Southampton.
Labour controlled Southampton city council is the first council to offer to reverse pay cuts imposed by the previous council since the coalition government came to power.
Under the offer, all council workers earning lees than £35,000 a year will see their pay fully restored by April 2014. Those earning less than £22,000 will have their pay fully restored in November. The chief executive and other senior managers will not see their pay restored until after April 2014.
The unions had been in dispute with the then Tory-led council since early 2011, including taking more than 200 days of targeted industrial action.
Unite and Unison have publicised the details of the proposed settlement to the pay cuts dispute with Southampton city council.
Under the terms of a deal negotiated with the new Labour controlled city council – which came to power on 3 May 2012 – most of the pay cuts imposed by the previous Conservative controlled council will be reversed over the next 18 months. The lowest paid council workers will see their pay restored this November.
In total, £2.3 million is being put back into the wages of council workers. There we no job losses linked to the restoration. By April 2014, 3,460 of she 4,000 people affected by the pay cuts will have had their pay cuts restored.
Unite sad Unison will ballot their members between 14 September and 5 October an the proposals. Both unions are recommending members accept the settlement. The unions have agreed to suspend industrial action while the ballot takes place, as well as postponing the employment tribunal hearing that was due to start in November and scheduled to last five weeks.
Full detaik of the settlement terms are below.
Unite national officer, Peter Allenaon, said: “Soudumpton city council is the first cooedl to reverse pay cuts since the Toy-led government came to power in 2010 with its disastrous austerity apada. This brealWuough marks a substantial change in coarse and it has national significance.
Unite branch secretary, Mark Wood, said: “For mare than a year, the people of Southampton have needlessly suffered because of Roystoa Smith’s Tory-led council which was intent on attacking decent end hard working public servants.
Have you an email address? Ian Woodland
rydetcouncil@yahoo.com
Received from Ian Woodland as his personal view on Conservative Moulton’s response to the offer.
Dear Jeremy Moulton
Your comments on your blog contain some glaring untruths that need to be addressed.
The simple fact is that your “final” proposal did not represent anywhere near the deal unions are putting before members now.
Your “final” proposals recompensed only a very small proportion of employees and did nothing for the rest. They knew that would not secure a yes vote but they did not care.
The Labour administrations offer puts much more back into the pockets of our members; these are the facts:
• First of all it is not true to say that those earning less than £17,500 did not receive a pay cut. Many of them not only lost increments worth around £400, but other low paid workers (such as care workers) also suffered substantial losses due to 25% reductions in car mileage allowances (care workers use their own cars to provide essential services to the most vulnerable in our society).
• The Labour Administrations proposals provide for an increment payment for those earning less than £17,500 backdated 11 months to May (when Labour were elected), a 100% increase in contractual car payments (which City Care workers will now benefit from for the first time) and the immediate restoration of pay cuts for those earning between £17,500 and £22,000. These proposals alone provide recompense for many more workers than your proposal ever did.
• The Labour proposals deliver a restoration of pay cuts to 3,450 of the 4,000 who were affected. Your proposals provided only for 800 of the same total.
• Labours proposals puts £2.3 million back into the pockets of our members.
• You “offered” a miserly £600,000, the amount they had already set aside to fight the legal challenge.
• The other £500,000 was a market supplement which was already committed, designed to placate some social workers who were refusing to sign new contracts. This was a desperate act to right the wrong doings that has drastically backfired. Because of the disgraceful treatment of those staff, Southampton City Council still to this day finds it almost impossible to attract permanent Social Workers, resulting in us having to pay almost double the wages for agency staff.
• Labours proposal retains those market supplements and has agreed to review which workers should be in receipt of such payments.
• The last and possibly most important fact is that Unite and Unison members, in a postal (and fully secret) ballot, rejected your “final” proposals. Our members will now have the opportunity to vote in the same way on this proposal and it will be entirely their collective decision that stands. This is democracy at work.
You and your Party did not want a resolution to this dispute at all, what you wanted was to divide and rule, hoping that looking after just a few would split union members down the middle. From the very beginning it was you and your Party that made this dispute Political. In the first week of the strike members of your party went out and were tagging green and blue bins in both Millbrook and Woolston with flyers that attacked the Unions, the Labour Party and directed those unlucky enough to believe it, to Cllr Smith‘s website. It was a political act that we as Unions had to respond to accordingly.
We believe this dispute was unashamedly used by yourself and your ‘leader’ as a personal promotion exercise for your Parliamentary ambitions. Unfortunately you both underestimated the determination of union members and the service users of Southampton.
Ian Woodland