The Council have issued notice to school based non-teaching staff that they propose to change Terms & Conditions which may include a pay cut.· The Council have included school based staff following legal advice that if they paid different groups of employees different rates of pay for work rated as equivalent they would be acting illegally and could expose themselves to significant risk of equal pay claims.
· UNISON believes the Council has no option if they intend to cut pay or Terms & Conditions but to act within the law and apply any cuts to all Council employees.
· If they did not do so, we would have to take action against them under equal pay legislation; otherwise we could be at risk of being sued by our members for condoning discrimination between groups of workers.
· UNISON has insisted that the Council carry out robust equalities impact assessments (EIA’s) on all of their proposals; we expect all of them (except the pay cut) will discriminate disproportionately on certain groups.
· UNISON is also challenging the Council’s budget assumptions which we believe overstate the deficit position to some extent.
· UNISON members rejected the package of cuts proposed by the Council but UNISON continue to talk with BMBC. We will do all we can to negotiate an outcome that is acceptable to our members and the Council, but if cuts are imposed we will ballot for industrial action.
· UNISON are considering alternative proposals that seek to balance a sacrifice to achieve savings in order to avoid compulsory redundancy. We do not believe that the Councils proposals provide that balance.
· UNISON is pressuring the Council to maximise the use of Voluntary Severance, and Early Retirement and to re-train and re-skill employees to undertake new roles in the organisation.
· Over 400 employees have expressed an interest in VS or SVER the Council should be doing all it can to allow these workers to leave and redeploy those at risk to their jobs.
· UNISON will not agree to any cuts without a full ballot of members, further Branch meetings to discuss proposals will be called at the appropriate time