- Conference
- 2015 Special Local Government Conference
- Date
- 2 February 2015
- Decision
- Carried
This Special Conference notes the 2014/15 NJC Pay Claim submitted on 5 November 2013 was for:
· A minimum increase of £1 an hour on scale point 5 to achieve the Living Wage and the same flat rate increase on all pay scale points.
This Special Conference also notes:
· The claim was based on the Living Wage rate outside London. The impact of a Living Wage related NJC sector-wide pay award is different for Greater London due to both the different (and higher) Living Wage hourly rate value and the separate London Weighting allowances.
· The 2014/15 NJC Pay Claim was adopted with the support of members, branches and Regions because it sought to address endemic low pay in local government, to halt further decline in real term NJC pay values and begin to restore the significant loss of real term pay values throughout the NJC pay spine.
· There was (and is) widespread understanding it would in all likelihood take more than one pay round to achieve these aims and objectives.
· The increase in the Living Wage rate since the claim was first submitted and a further increase to be applied from late 2015 (taking effect in April 2016) show starkly the current two-year NJC pay settlement puts us no closer to achieving any of the aims and objectives and the settlement both prolongs and deepens the problems for, at the very least, the further two-year period.
· Every cumulative inflation forecast for the full period 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2016 demonstrates clearly the current two-year NJC pay settlement is yet another real term pay cut for the vast majority of NJC workers and does not address the massive reduction in real wages of the last few years.
This Special Conference agrees the widely supported and easily understood aims and objectives of the 2014/15 NJC Pay Claim remain just as relevant and even more pressing today.
This Special Conference further notes:
· It is expressed Government policy shared by all the ‘mainstream’ political parties that public sector pay restraint and the pay award cap will remain in place until at least 2017/18.
· None of the ‘mainstream’ political parties are publicly committed to removing the pay award cap and/or to a programme of restoring any of the lost real term value in NJC pay.
· Pay restraint in local government started around 2004.
This Special Conference instructs the Service Group Executive and National Joint Council Committee:
1)To produce a simple table that shows for each point on the NJC pay spine
a)The value as it was with effect from 1 April 2004
b)The value as it was with effect from 1 April 2013
c)The value as it with effect from January 2015 running through to 31 March 2016 under the current settlement
d)The value it would have been in January 2015 had increases to NJC pay point values kept pace with inflation since 2004
2. To distribute this table to all local government branches not later than end of May 2015.