Pay petitionAs part of our ongoing pay campaign in the Ministry of Defence, we asked members to sign a petition on the Number10.gov website asking “the Prime Minister to personally intervene to stop the Ministry of Defence from slashing the pay of their lowest paid workers.”
The petition closed on 14 October 2009 by which time over 1500 members had signed the petition. We have noted that it has taken over three months for a response to be delivered from the government, but those members that signed the petition should now have finally received an email response personally from the 10 Downing Street website.
The response (see it here) regrettably does nothing to try to resolve our dispute on pay, and instead merely restates the department’s position regarding the cut in pay and pensions of staff in the E1 and E2 Pay band.
The response is also misleading when it claims that “Everyone above the new pay band maxima has been given pay protection”. This is partly true, but this pay protection is only guaranteed for the duration of the pay award and effectively expires in July next year.
Our pay campaign therefore will now be stepped up and will continue until we have achieved fair pay for all of our members.
We continue to press the department to work with us to resolve the dispute on pay. This week PCS negotiators met with the Minister for the Armed Forces, Bill Rammell. He gave us an assurance that he would look into the ongoing dispute.
We very much welcome this and we have made clear to him that we believe a negotiated settlement is possible if the will exists to find an acceptable way forward. As ever we will keep members informed of any developments through regular updates and briefings.
Grievance Hearings
A number of members have contacted our union regarding the forthcoming pay grievance hearing, over 200 of our members have lodged a grievance and we encourage all members to attend their respective hearing.
We have agreed with the Department that all of the grievance hearings will be held in Main Building, London. They will take place on Friday 29th January 2010 and Tuesday 2nd February 2010. The hearings will be collective and will deal with a number of similar grievances at the same time.
PCS will provide full representation at these meetings by either Chris Dando or KC Jones. Members are not required to make representation but are encouraged to make any points they wish to those responsible for cutting their pay.
It is important to note that each of these grievances has been submitted under the recognised grievance procedure, therefore all travel and subsistence costs fall to the department and members intending to travel should ask their Line Manager to arrange payment of these costs.
In the meantime we are also preparing our test cases for Employment Tribunal (which will proceed if the department rejects our members’ grievances) and a case management discussion was held with a Tribunal chairman this week. Following this positive hearing we anticipate moving quickly to formal legal action once the grievance hearings have been held and the formal legal hearing is likely to be held in the Spring.
Winning justice for every member on pay remains our top priority and our dispute will continue and escalate until this is achieved.
