All public sector organisations have had a legal obligation to rationalise their salaries and conditions of employment. This was to even out unfairness which has built up over the decades and makes perfect sense overall. It was supposed to come into effect in 2007 but it took much longer and the Vale of Glamorgan, where I work, is just now getting to the point of rolling it out.
It has been a mammoth task. Every post has been looked at, a very long questionnaire filled in which looked at every post with regard to a variety of criteria. Lots of posts are what are termed generic eg all care workers on the same grade have the same criteria and will end up the same, while others are analysed individually. It has had to be cost neutral so the pot for salaries has not increased.
This morning I went to a meeting describing the details of what the results will be, and how the process will work. We will all get letters on Friday to tell us if we go up, go down or stay the same. So everyone is in a state of anxiety. They say that 80% of staff will be neutral, neither up nor down, so 20% could be up or could be down. Pay is supported for one year after the new system comes in but after that if your salary has gone down, you will go down to what that drop in salary is.
Needless to say everyone is quite worried about it. I think we are all hoping to stay the same, but we are all worried about going down. As we are on a final salary pension scheme this could affect my pension if I go down, so in that case I would have to think about job hunting. Not a good thought in the public sector in a depression.
I am hoping to stay where I am. If I do it will actually be a benefit because I will get more increments as the scale is wider than my current salary scale, so I will get increments again.
Fingers crossed.
1 comment:
Good gracious. Fingers crossed. Hope it all goes well, it is a tuly crappy time to be looking for work.
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