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Job Evaluation - some
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Job Evaluation

Devon County Council Job Evaluation Inconsistencies!

Joint Union Press Release - GMB, TGWU & UNISON (18 May 07)

Lodging a Grievance (24 May 07)

Please note that if you wish to lodge a Grievance you do have to follow the agreed procedure (opens in a new window) and to be sure to do this by the deadline of Tuesday 29 May 07.

Appeals (10 Jan 07)

Sorry to have to state the obvious - but if you want UNISON's help with an Appeal, you do need to be a UNISON member already! Also, when contacting the office to seek assistance or advice please state your membership number and contact address - you'd be surprised at how many people there are of the same name.

If you don't have your membership number handy then you can ring the Branch Admin office (☎ 01392 382530) and this can be looked up). Thanks.

Final Ballot Result (21 Nov 06)

Those in favour of accepting the agreement - 71.5%. Those against 28.5%.

as at 26 Oct 06

The Joint Trade Unions have reached a final settlement on Job Evaluation and have agreed to consult all members affected who work for Devon County Council.

UNISON are conducting a full member ballot on the proposed settlement to decide whether or not you wish to accept it. Please note that accepting this settlement would mean changing to Devon County Council's new Pay and Grading system.

Ballot papers were distributed on 27 Oct 06 and the ballot closed on 17 Nov 06.

To ensure maximum possible transparency in the process the Branch needs to present the settlement as accurately and objectively as we can. To do this we have set up the following:

  1. Read the full documents on line at the County Council's Job Evaluation page on https://staff.devon.gov.uk/jobevaluation (opens in a new window) when available. You need to use a Devon County Council computer to do this. Staff who do not have computer access should contact the Branch Admin Office for a hard copy.

  2. Visit these UNISON branch web pages to be advised about the settlement's strengths and weaknesses.

  3. A Special General Meeting was held on Wednesday 1 Nov 06 and devoted to Job Evaluation..

  4. If you have a query contact
    the UNISON branch answerphone ☎ on 01392 383424
    or
    e-mail e-mail icon. branchoffice@devoncountyunison.org.uk

Joint Statement with Devon County Council - 12 Oct 06

At a media briefing yesterday, timed to coincide with the release of Devon County Executive Committee papers containing a report on Job Evaluation, some additional details were shared with the media in response to direct questions about the impact of Job Evaluation on staff. Some of this draft detail has subsequently appeared in the local media.

Although the figures given are not final or precise and are still subject to political and trades union approval, we regret that this draft detail was not shared with staff first and will make sure that this does not happen again.

Of the 17,000 employees covered by Job Evaluation, under current proposals approximately 6,500 posts (38%) will receive an increase in salary, 1,700 posts (10%) will face a reduction in salary, and over half of all staff will be unaffected. We repeat that these are draft figures and are liable to slight change right up until April 2007.

For people who gain under these proposals the effect would be immediate from April 2007 with up to six years' equal pay compensation for those employees with valid claims. Front-line staff in schools, social care services and Devon Direct Services represent a significant majority (85%) of these posts.

Recognising that some staff will lose there will be three years' full pay protection. The number of these posts has been kept to a minimum in the proposed agreement and those affected will be able to receive support, guidance and training. All staff will also have the right of appeal on any decision.

The collective agreement will be subject to a trades union ballot by the end of October.

We are continuing to work on the precise details of the proposed scheme in conjunction with the Trades Unions and aim to release this directly to staff in November.

Chief Executive
Phil Norrey

Joint Secretary for the Trade Unions
(GMB, UNISON and TGWU)
Moira Andrews

Joint Statement with Devon County Council - 11 Oct 06

Devon County Council has announced proposals for the implementation of the authority's Job Evaluation scheme, which aims to tackle inequalities in the workplace.

Job Evaluation is a national programme being carried out by all local authorities under the Single Status Agreement, which required councils to review their local pay arrangements. It is a method used to establish a fair and equal pay and grading structure, and to ensure that all jobs are evaluated in the same way by looking at factors for jobs rather than at individual members of staff.

A dedicated, full-time team of professionals have been working on the project - which has the full backing of the Trades Unions UNISON, GMB and TGWU - for the past three years. Now proposals have been drawn up in a draft collective agreement with the Unions which will support and protect staff affected by Job Evaluation.

Over 17,000 County Council staff, including non-teaching staff in schools, will be affected by Job Evaluation. Whilst the majority of salaries are likely to stay the same or increase, a small number of staff will experience a pay reduction and protection arrangements will be in place for staff affected in this way.

The proposals in the draft collective agreement include one year's pay arrears, the maximum of six years' equal pay compensation for employees with valid claims and three years' full pay protection for employees whose salary goes down. There will also be support, guidance and training arrangements for those staff that need it, and a two stage informal and formal appeals process open to all staff.

These proposals will now go before the County Council's decision making body the Executive Committee on 17 Oct 06 and be subject to Trades Union ballots.

Chief Executive
Phil Norrey

Joint Secretary for the Trade Unions
(UNISON, GMB and TGWU)
Moira Andrews

Result from Ballot

The details of the first ballot on whether 'significant progress' has been made are:

The second ballot to accept or reject the full package can now go ahead and will start on 27 Oct 06 after full details can be shown.

Balloting will end on 17 Nov 06 and will be run by Electoral Reform Balloting Services.

Branch Statement - 23 Sep 06

Staff side has worked on the Job Evaluation proposals for many years and throughout this time we have tried to keep members informed of our progress.

We have now reached a point where we believe we have achieved significant progress on this process.

This has been achieved by our many meetings on every aspect of the changes to ensure staff are protected, we have also had two of our members seconded into the process to do the audit, the significant progress was reached by them quality assuring 50% of the questionnaires / panel results.

We have also reduced the many pay band proposals to a preferred option.

We are working jointly with the other unions and management to ensure that we can proceed to get the best result we can in this government imposed process.

The Branch view is that we are likely to see considerable improvement through Job Evaluation, when the package is revealed in October. We will not be in a position to progress to that stage unless we have a clear YES vote in the ballot.After the full Job Evaluation package is published there will be a further ballot to accept or reject the Job Evaluation results. You will then be able to see in detail the full picture before voting again.

Staff Side report to the Special General Meeting - 8 May 06 - now updated by Ken Pearson, Regional Officer - 15 Sep 06

The authority intends to issue the results of the job evaluation process to staff in November. Following the recommendation from Staff Side the branch Executive has agreed to ensure that the Branch Office is sufficiently resourced to deal with enquiries from members, including a designated phone line for members use.

Staff Side envisages a tremendous increase in workloads for stewards in dealing with the likely number of appeals and has negotiated improved facility time with adequate resourcing to backfill posts or adjustment of workload.

However, there are very few stewards remaining who have been trained in the Greater London Provincial Council job evaluation scheme and therefore we have sought to prioritise resourcing to train more stewards in order to deal with the appeals. Volunteers needed now!

Collective Agreement

During August Staff Side entered into urgent discussion on the detail required to complete the Job Evaluation Collective Agreement with the Authority. The detail of protection for Red Circled jobs (those that will go down) remains a thorny issue as does the back dating of pay for those that are Green Circled (those that go up). The union position is to seek backdating to May 2004, the commencement date for the moratorium, when no further individual or collective regradings could have been lodged.

The branch will conduct a ballot of all its members on the final document before any agreement is entered into. This will be done late October with all the final details in place.

Staff Side have spent considerable time Quality Assuring the Job Evaluation results that were done by Panels where there was not a UNISON representative at the Panel, as a consequence of the branch withdrawing support in 2004 and early last year. This work is still ongoing and we have now completed sufficient quality assured evaluations to move onto Pay Modelling the scheme to Equality Assure it.

Pay & Grading Structures

The Authority has agreed to jointly present credibly-costed, equality proofed models for the boards approval, which is currently being done in order to comply with the National Agreement. The deadline for this is early October.

The scheduled Special General meeting on 10 May 06 agreed the new timescale for Implementation of the scheme to be as at April 2007.

Performance and Reward

Staff Side has successfully challenged the proposal from management to introduce target-based performance into the appraisal process linked to reward. Without an acceptable, agreed competency framework, we believe the proposal contained discriminatory elements and open to abuse.

The authority had intended to introduce reward by performance in 2007, the time scale now is to seek agreement on a scheme to be rolled out over the next 2-3 years.

Moira Andrews
Co Chair
Devon County Council Staff side
7 May 06
Updated by Ken Pearson, Regional Officer, 15 Sep 06

(Earlier material on this page has now been archived)