The Stirrer is reporting that Birmingham City Council are due to lower the wages of some staff by as much as £15,000 pa.
The Council is being forced to adjust its wage structure to meet the Single Status objective, designed to iron out historic inequalities between male and female-dominated areas of work..
It’s thought that staff on whose income is being reduced will be given termination notices, and then an offer of re-engagement – those who refuse to sign will be sacked.
Well, that £15k is probably just one employee – that street-light engineer on around £90k a year who managed to pick up all his performance bonuses despite being on long-term sick leave all year. If so, forgive me if no tears are shed! From listening to the radio at the time this was first reported, apparently there was a lot that went wrong with wage negotiations for BCC employees in the 1990s with a good number of people with salaries vastly above the going rate. When the representative from BCC was interviewed on Today, he intimated in a roundabout way that whoever agreed these salary structures hadn’t bothered to read them, or was an imbecile, or both.
I think the thing that upsets most is that your employer cans simply change the terms of your contract -and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I have a hunch that employment law would normally protect these people – it’s quite strict about sacking people and then re-employing them into the same role – but for the fact that they’re being paid stupid money for what they do.
it’s happing to me at the moment, I work in a school, we have been told to expected a drop in wages, as I am only an LSP it won’t be worth carrying on with the job