Council Re-grading and Back-Pay

splatercash

Hey, just thought I would canvass opinion on where my wife stands in relation to her recent application for a re-grading.

She works for a Local Authority and in February last year new legislation was passed that had an immediate impact on her duties. She uses a computer-based system to log jobs, meaning that stats are available to show the near instant change in what she was doing on a day-to-day basis.

The new duties take up 70%+ of her time and are far more involved than what she was doing before. Specifically, it requires a higher level of intelligence, involves enforcement, conflict resolution, dealing with the police, PF, and courts, and it involves a lot of unsupervised decision making (that has consequences). This is very different from what she did before.

She completed an application for a re-grading and to have her job titled changed to reflect the fact that what she does has completely transformed. The Council have accepted her argument and are re-grading her upwards accordingly.

However, they are rejecting her (and her colleague's) claim for back payment from the day that the job roll changed significantly. We feel this is unfair as there was an overnight transformation in her duties and responsibilities and she has diligently worked away for nearly a year in this new roll. If the Council accepts that she should be remunerated higher for this new roll, surely they should pay her for all the days she has worked in that capacity?

Any idea where we stand on this?

Jarndyce

ROLE !!!!!!. ROLE. With an E.

Sorry. Pet hate. Anyway, you will probably find that there is a collective agreement on job evaluation which covers these cicrumstances. Her union should be able to advise as to whether there is any prospect of obtaining back pay.

splatercash

Fingers ahead of brain typo....hardly worth getting upset about <shrug>

Is their any other information you have that might be useful to me?

EconomicsGirl

I would ask her union or ACAS. Personally if her job title has only just changed and she's just got the change in writing I would have thought she wouldn't be entilted to back pay but that's just my guess, someone else may well know better. In the current climate I think she's done very well to keep her job and get a payrise and with more redundancies looming I personally wouldn't be pushing the backpay issue. My SIL works for a local council and was made to take a 6% paycut along with everyone else at her council and in the public sector many jobs are the same in practice with a new job title but have been downgraded with paycuts. When I worked in the public sector 50% of the staff where going and the remaining 50% where expected to pick up the extra work for no extra pay.

SarEl

The usual term for re-grading based on new duties is that the change takes effect from the date of the re-grading review

splatercash

SarEl wrote: »

The usual term for re-grading based on new duties is that the change takes effect from the date of the re-grading review

From our research, this appears to be a universal truth.

Like it or lump it I think.

somethingcorporate

SarEl wrote: »

The usual term for re-grading based on new duties is that the change takes effect from the date of the re-grading review

Makes sense really. Unless the role was under review at the time of the change then it was the lower grade until deemed otherwise.

SarEl

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Makes sense really. Unless the role was under review at the time of the change then it was the lower grade until deemed otherwise.

Yes. Back pay is generally reserved for equality claims where the contention is that the pay has been unlawful. But to be fair, I am generalising from what most authorities I come across do, and couldn't pretend to have read the policies of every single one!