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Pay update no 24

15 April 2010

Members will be aware that regular pay forum meetings are held between the trade unions and management and any developments following from these meetings will be reported back.

This circular is intended to update members on the issues where we are challenging management in the legal arena on behalf of members.

Age discrimination cases

There are a number of age discrimination employment tribunal (ET) claims that have been submitted together with those of colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, National Offender Management Service and the Valuation Office Agency.

The claims seek to challenge long pay progression systems as being biased against younger staff.

An employment tribunal hearing has been scheduled for April 12-16 2010 in Cardiff. This will be mainly concerned with legal issues and interpretation of the regulations and whether, and at what stage, the cases could be referred to the European Court.

A further circular will be issued following this first hearing.

Equal pay cases

A total of 87 D and C2 grade employment tribunal claims on equal pay cases have been submitted to the employment tribunal. We will be challenging the use and abuse of higher starting pay and the length of service aspects of MoD pay. We await a date for the ET hearing.

Band E1 and E2 unlawful deduction of wages cases

A total of 11 cases have been submitted to the tribunal. Following the MoD internal grievance procedure hearings the MoD have responded by rejecting all of the 26 grievances. Group officers have considered the issue and decided that we should now progress to the independent grievance appeal panel (IGAP).

The issue was raised during a meeting with the Minister for the Armed Forces, Bill Rammell, who instructed his officials to meet with our union to try to resolve the issue.

Two meetings have been held with MoD pay officials and PCS. Our union argued strongly for a no detriment position with management stating that there was no money available. We now await a written response from management on how they see the way forward.

An employment tribunal case conference held on 8 April issued directions concerning the provision of further and better particulars and agreed dates for a five-day hearing to be held in July 2010.

Chris Dando, MoD group president and Bob Rollings, MoD group secretary met with Thompson’s solicitors on 9 April 2010 and the further and better particulars have been drafted and submitted. Our union has also agreed to engage counsel on the case.

On 13 April 2010 the MoD GEC agreed to recommend to E1 and E2 members that they should submit independent grievance appeals procedure (IGAP) to be heard as individual cases. Representation will be provided by PCS at the hearings.

Any future developments will be reported on.

 

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