The Local Government Association (LGA) has made a two-year pay offer from 1 April 2018 – 31 March 2020 for council, school and other members on NJC pay.
UNISON needs to know what all affected members think of this offer, so they can draw up the union’s official response to it. Whether they will accept or reject the offer is in your hands.
Read on below for more info:
Ballot
We will send all affected members a ballot very soon, electronically if we hold an email address for you, or by post if we don’t. Please respond to yours immediately (and certainly before our deadline of 9am on Wednesday 7 March 2018) so your voice is heard!
Summary of offer
The two-year offer is made up of two quite different offers, one for each of the two years covered:
- The offer for 1 April 2018 would give everyone a range of percentage pay increases ranging from 9.19% for the lowest pay grade to 2.00% for the highest.
- From 1 April 2019, the offer would see a significant reworking of the pay grades to spread them out more and remove a ‘bunching’ effect that has happened at the bottom as those on lowest pay have been raised faster to keep up with the national legal minimum wage. To assist with this, some of the lower grades will merge together into new grades. Everyone would get a percentage increase of between 2.00% and 8.91% but the pattern of exactly who gets what is quite complex to enable the lower-grade mergers and the spreading-out of all the grades.
You can read a UNISON Greater London Region FAQ Word document which may answer your questions about the offer and the union’s consultation.
UNISON Bexley branch committee’s view
Bexley’s branch executive committee’s view is that the argument is finely balanced: while this offer is a significant improvement on previous years, is particularly helpful to those on the lowest pay, and is the best achievable by negotiation alone, it does still fall short of this year’s inflation rate for most staff, following many previous years’ below-inflation increases. That fine balance is reflected in the national NJC committee’s vote being won only 12 votes to Reject against 11 to Accept.
Our branch therefore wants to encourage every single member to take a minute to look at the figures and decide for themselves whether to accept this offer, or to reject it and take sustained industrial action to try to get it improved. The most important thing is that as many members as possible feed back their views so we know we are doing what the membership as a whole wants. Please make sure you vote!
Please encourage other members you know to vote as well! You can get in touch with us if you’d like any materials to promote the ballot in your workplace, or any further information.
The offer in Bexley terms
The ballot shows the official format of the offer in terms of ‘NJC spine points’, but we thought it would be useful for members to be able to see the offer presented as a simple table showing what it would mean for everyone on Bexley’s specific grades, from Bexley 01 to 09.
Simply find your grade and point in the left-hand column (and your current salary in the second column), then read across that row to see what this offer should mean your salary would be in 2018 and 2019, and the increases that would represent each year in both percentage and cash terms.
| Bexley pay | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade.point | Current pay | New pay | Increase | New pay | Increase | ||
| % | £ | % | £ | ||||
| Bexley 01.3 | £17,961 | £19,611 | 9.19% | £1,650 | £20,104 | 2.51% | £492 |
| Bexley 01.4 | £17,985 | £19,635 | 9.17% | £1,650 | £20,104 | 2.39% | £469 |
| Bexley 02.2 | £17,961 | £19,611 | 9.19% | £1,650 | £20,104 | 2.51% | £492 |
| Bexley 02.3 | £17,985 | £19,635 | 9.17% | £1,650 | £20,104 | 2.39% | £469 |
| Bexley 02.4 | £18,051 | £19,701 | 9.14% | £1,650 | £20,466 | 3.88% | £764 |
| Bexley 03.1 | £18,051 | £19,701 | 9.14% | £1,650 | £20,466 | 3.88% | £764 |
| Bexley 03.2 | £18,105 | £19,755 | 9.11% | £1,650 | £20,466 | 3.60% | £711 |
| Bexley 03.3 | £18,330 | £19,880 | 8.46% | £1,550 | £20,834 | 4.80% | £954 |
| Bexley 03.4 | £18,357 | £19,897 | 8.39% | £1,540 | £20,834 | 4.71% | £937 |
| Bexley 04.1 | £18,330 | £19,880 | 8.46% | £1,550 | £20,834 | 4.80% | £954 |
| Bexley 04.2 | £18,357 | £19,897 | 8.39% | £1,540 | £20,834 | 4.71% | £937 |
| Bexley 04.3 | £18,375 | £19,915 | 8.38% | £1,540 | £21,209 | 6.50% | £1,294 |
| Bexley 04.4 | £18,396 | £19,936 | 8.37% | £1,540 | £21,209 | 6.39% | £1,274 |
| Bexley 05.1 | £18,657 | £20,007 | 7.24% | £1,350 | £21,591 | 7.92% | £1,585 |
| Bexley 05.2 | £18,936 | £20,136 | 6.34% | £1,200 | £21,591 | 7.23% | £1,456 |
| Bexley 05.3 | £19,281 | £20,181 | 4.67% | £900 | £21,980 | 8.91% | £1,798 |
| Bexley 05.4 | £19,623 | £20,473 | 4.33% | £850 | £21,980 | 7.36% | £1,507 |
| Bexley 06.1 | £19,917 | £20,667 | 3.77% | £750 | £22,376 | 8.27% | £1,709 |
| Bexley 06.2 | £20,598 | £21,198 | 2.91% | £600 | £22,778 | 7.45% | £1,580 |
| Bexley 06.3 | £21,276 | £21,702 | 2.00% | £426 | £23,188 | 6.85% | £1,487 |
| Bexley 06.4 | £21,984 | £22,424 | 2.00% | £440 | £23,606 | 5.27% | £1,182 |
| Bexley 07.1 | £22,506 | £22,956 | 2.00% | £450 | £24,463 | 6.56% | £1,507 |
| Bexley 07.2 | £23,115 | £23,577 | 2.00% | £462 | £24,903 | 5.62% | £1,326 |
| Bexley 07.3 | £23,802 | £24,278 | 2.00% | £476 | £25,352 | 4.42% | £1,074 |
| Bexley 07.4 | £24,510 | £25,000 | 2.00% | £490 | £25,808 | 3.23% | £808 |
| Bexley 08.1 | £24,510 | £25,000 | 2.00% | £490 | £25,808 | 3.23% | £808 |
| Bexley 08.2 | £25,242 | £25,747 | 2.00% | £505 | £27,227 | 5.75% | £1,480 |
| Bexley 08.3 | £26,019 | £26,539 | 2.00% | £520 | £27,717 | 4.44% | £1,178 |
| Bexley 08.4 | £26,805 | £27,341 | 2.00% | £536 | £28,216 | 3.20% | £875 |
| Bexley 09.1 | £26,805 | £27,341 | 2.00% | £536 | £28,216 | 3.20% | £875 |
| Bexley 09.2 | £27,801 | £28,357 | 2.00% | £556 | £29,767 | 4.97% | £1,410 |
| Bexley 09.3 | £28,668 | £29,241 | 2.00% | £573 | £30,214 | 3.33% | £972 |
| Bexley 09.4 | £29,517 | £30,107 | 2.00% | £590 | £30,709 | 2.00% | £602 |
Higher Bexley grades (Hay grades/Bexley 10+)
The Bexley grades higher than these (Hay grades, from Bexley 10 upwards) would be settled subsequently. The higher grades in the national employers’ offer do not correspond directly to Bexley Hay grades.
The agreed deal on Bexley 01 to 09 is one of the key factors taken into account when setting the higher grades, and in recent years the offer on higher grades has been very similar, so it is likely that these higher grades would get the same settlement as the highest grade above – a simple 2.00% increase each year. Ultimately though this would be decided by Bexley locally after the above NJC-based grades have had their settlement agreed.
Note that, because the NJC settlement is a key factor in Bexley’s local determination of these higher grades’ pay rates, members on these higher grades will be balloted about the NJC offer.
