Public and Commercial Services Union

25 June 2009

Update on negotiations

PCS has received a further letter on pay from the Director General for Civilian Personnel, Susan Scholefield. This is attached to this circular with the PCS response.

As you will see our union has asked Susan to meet with PCS members impacted by the imposed pay and pension cuts at E1 and E2. We will advise members of her response in due course. Our union hopes that those responsible for the pay and pension cuts can find time to discuss their proposals with those on the receiving end of them.

We are also seeking a meeting with the new secretary of state on pay and have written to him asking him to intervene and help us resolve our dispute. We will also advise members of his response.

Legal action

Many thanks to the thousands of members who have completed the pay protest letter. Next week PCS will be asking all members at E1 and E2 to complete a grievance on pay and pension cuts. It is vital that this is completed by all members.

We are also in the process of lodging employment tribunal claims and further details on this will be set out in the next pay circular.

Industrial action

The PCS MoD group is seeking approval from our national disputes committee to commence a ballot for industrial action across MoD. Should approval be granted we intend to commence the ballot on 21 July 2009. We are currently consulting branches and members on the forms of activity that we should take in the event of a YES vote. Again we wish to thank members who have taken the time to give us their feedback and ideas to date. These ideas have been incorporated into our planning.

Further details will be set out in future pay updates.

National campaign

Our union is continuing our campaign around public sector pay. Talks are ongoing between PCS and the Cabinet Office/Treasury.

PCS national conference last month decided that members will be consulted across the civil service during the summer about the way forward for our national pay campaign. More details on this will be available soon.

MoD regional forums

Our GEC has also agreed to consult widely across the group throughout the summer. We will be holding regional forums near you to discuss MoD pay and much more including job cuts and the operational efficiency programme, the future of corporate services, outsourcing, civilian allowances and other MoD programmes.

Why not come along?

Members are also asked to:

1. Sign the petition protesting about the pay cuts on the 10 Downing Street website
2. Protest to the new secretary of state - please download the model letter here

A further pay update will be issued shortly.

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Text of letters

23 June 2009

Ms Susan Scholefield
Director General Human Resources & Corporate Services
Ministry of Defence
Main Building
Level 6 Zone D
London
SW1A 2HB

Dear Susan

2008 Non industrial pay award – Open letter from PCS

Thank you for your letter of 9th June 2009.

In the letter you pose a number of questions that PCS has already answered fully on a number of occasions. However, for the avoidance of doubt, we are happy to answer them again.

PCS legal challenge

You have asked us to clarify the basis of our legal challenge.

PCS has advised members to write to you regarding a detriment that you have imposed. PCS is clear that our members have a contractual right to progress to the current pay band maximum for their grade (for the avoidance of doubt this is the pay band maxima as at 31st July 2008).

MoD decided to impose a unilateral reduction to pay band maxima which amounts to a unilateral variation of the contracts of employment of each of our members in pay band E1 and E2.

We will be taking further steps in the next few weeks to further protect our member’s legal position.

MoD “sympathy” for PCS members

You again repeat your claim that you are prepared to work with us “to investigate how pay scales should be restructured going forwards”.

In our meetings with you to date we have seen no evidence of this. At our meetings the department has only offered to ‘express sympathy’ to members facing pay and pension cuts and to let staff at E1 and E2 know that you “will be thinking of them” in the next pay round (which is due in 2010/2011)

PCS would again repeat to you that our members cannot pay their bills or feed their families with your ‘sympathy’.

We are willing to talk to MoD at any time and place but only on the basis that you have something meaningful to say and that you commit to a revised offer that contains more than warm words.

Pay cuts for PCS members

You state that “no individual will suffer a detriment” as a result of your proposals. This is simply inaccurate.

Over 2,000 staff will have consolidated pay and pension entitlements transferred to a non consolidated payment that the department can take away on a whim. This is a disgrace and totally unacceptable.

Every other member of staff at E1 and E2 has been transferred to a new pay scale with a lower maximum – meaning lower pay and a lower final salary pension when they come to retire. This is a also a disgrace and also totally unacceptable

PCS proposals

Despite us setting out a number of times our proposals to resolve this dispute you again ask us to repeat these.

PCS proposes:

1. The involvement of the independent conciliation service, ACAS, to provide assistance in helping us to resolve this dispute.
2. To involve the Cabinet Office and Treasury in those talks. This is particularly important as you have repeatedly told us that you have a deal with the Treasury based on cutting the pay of the lowest paid staff in the department.
3. To agree new pay scales for PCS members at E1 and E2 that would be acceptable to MoD and to PCS.
4. To agree reserved rights for existing PCS members in MoD that honours their current contracts of employment.
5. To provide a guarantee for all PCS members of no future detriment to their pay and pensions.
6. To produce new proposals that would alleviate the concerns of PCS members working overseas in respect of inner London weighting.
7. To ensure that MoD pay proposals cohere with the wider national talks of pay rates and ranges between PCS and the Cabinet Office.
8. That MoD should accept it cannot railroad pay cuts and that it has an obligation to reach an agreement on pay with the union that represents 25,000 of its staff.

Meeting with PCS members

Our members are rightly angry at these proposals. Our members at all grades are sickened by proposals to attack the pay of the lowest paid in the department.

They cannot understand why MoD constantly states that our members (some of whom earn as little as £17,000 per year and are entitled to benefit because they are so poorly paid) are “overpaid” particularly when some of those saying it, in contrast, enjoy lavish pay, bonus and expenses packages.

We would like you to hear for yourself what our member’s think of your proposals – and why they believe MoD should genuinely seek to resolve this dispute on pay. Many senior MoD officials have accused PCS of over exaggerating our member’s anger at the pay cuts.

You will have already received a number of letters from PCS members raising concerns about your proposals (your letter of 9 June 2009 makes passing reference to these). In order that you can properly appreciate their strength of feeling on this issue, I would therefore like to invite you to meet PCS members working at E1 and E2 so that they can put their points to you directly.

PCS will be happy to arrange a venue for the meeting and if you are agreeable I would be grateful if you could contact me to agree a date for the meeting. We would hope that the department would fund the travel and subsistence costs for our members to come to the meeting, but in the event that you are not PCS will meet those costs.

We hope you will agree to meet face to face our members who face cuts to their pay and pensions.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Paul Barnsley, group secretary

 

 

 

Director General Human Resources & Corporate Services
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
Level 6 Zone D Main Building Whitehall LONDON SW1A 2HB
Telephone: 020 7218 6833 Fax: 020 7218 3371
Email: DGHRCS-group@mod.uk

D/DGHRCS/2/3/4 (133)

9 June 2009

Paul Barnsley
MOD National Officer,
PCS,
160, Falcon Road,
London,
SW11 2LN
 

Dear Paul

 

2008 Non industrial pay award

1. Thank you for your two letters of 1 June 2009 sent by e-mail.
2. Your first letter, in which you reserve your members’ position, contains similar assertions to those made by some of your members who have written to me using a template which I understand was provided by the union. As we have told those of your members who have written individually, the Department has been very careful to ensure that no member of staff suffered any detriment in pay terms as a result of the 2008 award. We do not, therefore, believe there has been any unilateral variation to contracts of employment.
3. As you know, the Department’s offer was structured so that all staff below the pay band maxima received a 2.5% increase, backdated to 1 August 2008, and they were then assimilated on to the next highest scale point on the 3% scale. Those staff above the new pay band maxima received a 0.5% cash payment and a 2% pensionable allowance paid monthly from that date. On 1 May 2009, the 2% allowance was added to the protected pay allowance which was achieved by converting the difference between the new pay band maxima and current salary into a protected allowance which has all the characteristics of an individual’s existing pay so it is reckonable for pension, overtime and promotion purposes. When that formal proposal was put to the PCS in Dec 08, you noted the details but chose not to ballot members until 14 Apr 09.
4. I am unclear what you mean when you state in your letter that the PCS believes its members in pay bands E1 and E2 have “a contractual right to progress to the current pay band maxima”. Presumably by “current” you are referring to the pay scales set under the 2006 award which expired on 31 July 2008. It would be helpful if you could explain what you mean and let me know the basis of the “contractual right” claimed.
5. On your second letter, we have indicated to the non-industrial trade unions that we will continue to work with you to investigate how pay scales should be structured going forward. It is difficult to predict what affordability constraints might be imposed on public sector pay when the current three year award expires on 31 July 2011. We have already offered to look at those in receipt of the protected pay allowance before then, in consultation with the Trade Unions, to see if there is a case for re-grading some of those posts or to consider whether there is any justification to pay a market skills supplement to any of the affected groups. Also, as I said in my earlier letter, PUS has offered to provide greater assurance to your members who are in the pay protection group and to work with you before the next pay round to address the pay protection issue. We remain willing to try and agree with you a form of words to cover your concerns.
6. In your correspondence and in your communications to your members, you persistently say that the Department is proposing to cut the pay of the lowest paid staff. In fact, the offer was carefully structured to ensure no individual suffered a detriment in pay terms. All your members, apart from those already on the pay band maxima, received a 2.5% increase backdated to 1 August 2008 which was paid in their February salaries. The Department has absolutely not cut anyone’s pay.
7. In your letter you express disappointment with the Department’s position on third party assistance and say that you had not sought arbitration. However, our contemporaneous notes of the meeting with PUS on 14 May 2009, record that PCS sought a short adjournment and on return requested third party assistance in the form of arbitration with ACAS. You also say that PCS had offered several proposals to resolve the issue; we recall your suggestions that the Cabinet Office and/or HM Treasury should be drawn into our discussions and that the new maxima should be withdrawn. Are these the several proposals to which you refer, or are there more ? For clarification, it would be helpful if you could explain in writing exactly what your proposals are both in terms of external assistance and for resolving the substance of the dispute.
8. As I have said, we remain willing and ready to continue discussing your concerns with a view to reaching agreement.

 

Susan Scholefield
DGHRCS