West Midlands UNISON Regional Secretary, Ravi Subramanian has called on Tory MP Aidan Burley
(Cannock Chase) to retract comments he made in the House of Commons,
which wholly misrepresented the union’s position on government plans to
introduce regional pay into the public sector.
Questioning Labour MP Rachel Reeves, Burley used a sentence from a
UNISON report to suggest that the union is in favour of introducing
regional pay. But Mr Burley failed to mention the crucial sentences
which follow, which qualify the statement. His cynical, selective
editing presented UNISON as being in favour of government plans to
introduce regional pay, when the opposite is true – as is fully
explained in the report.
Ravi Subramanian, said:
“Parliamentary privilege is not an excuse to peddle half-truths and
lies, and Aidan Burley MP’s disingenuous comments in the House of
Commons must be retracted. UNISON is firmly against plans to introduce
regional pay in the public sector. The entire thrust of the report he
quotes sets out why the Government's policy is flawed and does not
reflect practice in the private sector. The sentence he lifted is taken
totally out of context and is very misleading.
“Public sector workers – including those in Aidan Burley’s constituency –
know that the plans for regional pay are not about increasing fairness,
but about cutting pay plain and simple. The plans would not only lead
to staff shortages, but would spark an upsurge in expensive bureaucracy,
and take money out of hard-pressed local economies, just when they need
it most. They must be dropped.”
This is what Burley said in Parliament:
"I am glad that the hon. Lady
read my quotation in The Daily Telegraph this morning. As she has read
out a couple of quotations, perhaps I may read one back to her:
“location-based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic
approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local
level.”
That is from UNISON’s policy paper “Location-based pay differentiation”,
which was published in September 2011. Does she agree with UNISON"
Later on he says:
"I noted that she did not reply to the quote in my intervention, so I
will repeat it to her now. UNISON has said in its location-based pay
differentiation paper of September 2011 that said “location-based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic
approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local
level.”
Government Members agree with UNISON in that analysis, and I shall be
interested to hear whether any Labour Members, many of whom will
doubtless be taking donations from UNISON to their constituency Labour
parties, also do.
The Government are right to look at more local, market-facing pay and to end the anomaly of national pay bargaining —"
The full extract from page 4 of the report is below, with the part he
quoted highlighted. The sentence which immediately follows makes it very
clear “location based” does not mean “local pay” and that there are
different models of “location based pay” which includes models exactly
like those currently used in the public sector. The report says:
“In organisations with a national reach, it can be difficult to set a
single pay rate for each job that is sufficient to recruit and retain
staff for all of the company’s locations and location based pay systems
offer increased flexibility and a systematic approach to addressing
recruitment and retention issues at a local level. A common
misconception is that such companies use a wide variety of different pay
rates for every location, when in reality there are three broad
approaches to varying pay by location:
- national pay scales with additions in London and the South East (and in some cases high-pressure areas known as ‘hot spots’)
- zonal pay systems with locations categories into a zones, each with its own pay rates
- complex local systems, which allow for more local variation and
include devolution of pay setting to local level in parts of the public
sector.”
In the very next paragraph, on the same page it says:
“Most large, multi-site, organisations have national pay structures with
additions for London and the South East, even those with zonal pay
systems tend to broadly mirror the traditional hierarchy of London, the
South East and the rest of the country. These approaches are easier to
manage and avoid the potential problems associated with having a large
variety of rates.”
The full report can be downloaded
here.
