The 'deal' agreed at the Police Negotiating Board
(PNB) on 9th May represents a total disregard for the wishes of the
overwhelming majority of the Scottish Officers.
Your four Scottish Representatives voted to 'reject'
the package but were out-voted by the Police Federation of England and Wales.
Following this 'agreement', Members are rightly
questioning the worth of a UK PNB which is able to deliver substantial
additional monies to officers in the south east of England but cannot
accommodate the views of 94% of Scottish Officers.
In the coming months there will require to be detailed
discussions about our whole approach to national negotiations and, to ensure
that your Representatives are best placed to articulate your concerns and
aspirations, a series of meetings (details to be announced) will be held
throughout the Force area with either myself and/or David Ross, the Assistant
Secretary, and your local Representative(s) in attendance.
YOUR views on this and other issues continue to be of
vital importance so I trust you will take the opportunity to attend.
JOHN B FINNIE, JBB Secretary
10th May 2002
PAY Reproduced below is the latest report from our General
Secretary
"PAY AND CONDITIONS - THE PNB AGREEMENT
You will know by now that
the PNB has finally reached agreement on the long running negotiation on pay
and conditions. In this Bulletin, I
give some background information and explain the agreement in summary.
Background
Information
All of this information up
to March/April 2002 has been circulated to you in full in the ten PNB Bulletins
issued from October 2001 to March 2002.
September
1999
Staff Side submitted pay
claim and entered a Joint Working Party with the Official Side.
April
2001
Home Secretary announced
Police Reform Programme in England and Wales and negotiations in Joint Working
Party put on hold by Official Side. This was part of a government policy on
public sector reform, which included the determination that there would be no
'across the board' pay settlements which were not linked to reform and
modernisation.
October
2001
Home Office published
'Outcomes Paper' with instructions to PNB on what it should achieve in
negotiations by the end of the year.
November
2001
Official Side published its
paper giving more detail of its desires from negotiations, including a proposal
to cut overtime rates to plain time and "discuss" weekly rest day and
public holiday rates.
December
2001
Heads of Agreement produced,
described as "best that could be negotiated in timescale" and
"subject to ratification by both Sides."
January
& February 2002
Heads of Agreement
circulated in full to all members asking them to accept or reject. In Scotland,
81.84% of officers responded to the consultation exercise and of those, 94.07%
voted to reject the Heads of Agreement. Similar results in England and Wales
and Northern Ireland resulted in "a failure to agree" being
registered and the subject moving from negotiation to conciliation.
March
& April 2002
On 11th March a
mass lobby of MPs was held at Westminster. Four conciliation meetings were held
- the details of which had to remain confidential. Staff Side conciliators held confidential briefings with members
of Joint Central Committee and Joint Branch Boards.
On Friday 26 April,
conciliation produced "a voluntary agreed recommendation" to be put
to the PNB Full Board as "a possible basis for reaching a settlement"
on Wednesday 1st May 2002.
Wednesday 1st
May 2002
Meeting agreed to extension
of time at request of Staff Side. Final
meeting arranged for Thursday 9th May 2002.
Thursday 9th May
2002
The Full Board of the PNB
reached a PNB Agreement which will now form a recommendation to the Home
Secretary, Scottish Ministers and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
for ratification.
These Ministers may,
jointly or separately, ratify the agreement or fail to ratify the
agreement. It is generally accepted
that Ministers will only fail to ratify the agreement if there "is a
matter of the utmost national importance". There have been numerous indications that Ministers would ratify
a settlement reached through negotiation and conciliation, and a number of
statements from the Home Secretary to the effect that he would legislate if he
did not like the outcome from the PNB, or for that matter, the outcome from
Arbitration.
The PNB
Agreement in Summary
The Staff Side of the PNB
decided to reach agreement on the basis of the confidential briefings they held
in March and April with the national and force based Federation
representatives. A minority of Staff
Side representatives (Scotland) thought that the recommendation from
conciliation should not be agreed, but rather, that the matter should have been
referred to Arbitration along with our 12% across the board pay claim. However the majority of Staff Side
representatives (E&W & NI) felt that the Agreement summarised below was
better than could have been achieved at Arbitration, and, of perhaps more
relevance, better than anything the Home Secretary would ratify following
Arbitration. You may have read the
article in The Herald of 26th April with the headline, "No
blank cheques for public sector pay rises, Brown warns." In the article, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer is quoted as saying, "The days of something for nothing are
over, we can only deliver world-class public services if strings are attached
and we change, update, and modernise to ensure public services can best serve
the public." This is precisely
the position the Official Side and the Home Office have taken throughout these
negotiations.
The main difference between
the Heads of Agreement circulated to you in January and the PNB Agreement
reached on 1st May, is that all overtime premia rates will remain
unaltered. Proposals for age
related starting salaries (higher rates for future joiners aged over 22 and
over 27) have been dropped. We have
some additional information on the Special Priority Post and Threshold Payment
Schemes (although a lot of work has yet to be done on these) and we have agreed
a statement on the Management of Overtime.
On that latter point, the
Management of Overtime, some further comments might be helpful. While both
Sides recognise that the nature of police work makes overtime working essential
and unavoidable, they also recognise that it is in everyone's interest to
ensure that overtime is worked only when absolutely necessary. The Official Side do not want large overtime
bills and overtime is often an unpredictable element of police budgets. The Staff Side believe that the majority of
officers do not want to work large amounts of overtime, preferring instead to
have time off with friends and family and sufficient police officer colleagues
to carry out basic policing duties.
Previous proposals in the Heads of Agreement sought to cut the overtime
rates paid to constables and sergeants and this was entirely unacceptable to
us. The statement on the Management of
Overtime recognises that:
·
Working time needs to
recognise the work/life balance of officers and the service's needs within the
Working Time Regulations
·
Increasing officer numbers,
altered rostering arrangements and a reduction in bureaucracy should reduce
overtime
·
Levels of overtime working
are affected by force strength; unforeseen major incidents; new requirements
and the availability of operational officers for frontline duties.
The statement on the
Management of Overtime proposes:
·
A target to reduce overtime
working by 15% over the 3 years beginning 2003/04
·
That Forces should be able
to score such savings against their 2% efficiency targets
·
That Forces should be able
to keep such savings and use them for increasing establishment or other
initiatives designed to generate greater visibility or availability.
The Staff Side believes
that this 'managed' reduction of overtime working coupled with the retention of
present overtime premia rates represents a significant improvement over
previous proposals.
The table below summarises
the rest of the Agreement. A full copy
will be circulated to you when it is available.
Douglas J Keil QPM
General
Secretary."
PNB AGREEMENT - This has no
effect on the annual pay deal which will continue to be indexed and paid in
September of each year.
None of these proposed
changes would take effect before 1st April 2003.
· Phased - fewer pay scale points for all ranks enabling earlier
access to maximum salary
· £400 increase to all pay points
· 75% prospect of £1002 p/a (pensionable) Threshold Payments after
one year at top of scale*
· Access to Special Priority Payments of between £500 and £5000 p/a
(non-pensionable) *
· Possible access to Bonus Payments of between £50 and £500
(non-pensionable) *
· Possible access to 30 year plus scheme
· Possible access to better occupational health provision
· 8 day notice overtime trigger to 5 days for rest days - (when
calculating these days, no account is taken of the day you are told or the rest
day in question.)
· Phased abolition of plain clothes allowance
· Subsistence & Refreshment from allowances to reimbursements
· Abolition of Frozen Undermanning Allowance
· Greater controls on access to ill-health pensions
· Minor
change to Sickness Regulation
* "Competence Related
Threshold Payments", "Special Priority Payments" and "Bonus
Payments" are described as "PROS" because they could positively
affect individual earnings. However, many police officers might describe them
as disadvantages or "CONS" because they could damage the ethos of
policing and shift emphasis from teamwork and public service to individual
achievement and reward. During the
negotiations, despite many attempts to have the money allocated to these put
into basic pay, it was made absolutely clear that the Government would demand
that these became features of police pay in the future.
OTHER CHANGES
· Annual Roster to become 3 monthly roster with annual leave and
public holiday working to continue on annual basis.
· 16 hour a week minimum for part-time working abolished.
· Removal Allowance replaced by reimbursement
· Firearms users standby allowance discontinued and to become
eligible for Special Priority Payment
· Gratuity for searching or fingerprinting badly decomposed bodies
discontinued and to become eligible for Bonus Payment
· Recurring Escort Duty Allowance (paid only to officers full-time
engaged on VIP protection) discontinued and to become eligible for payment
under Regulation 63 (in Scotland)
· Some Regulations retained, some deleted, some moved to
"Determinations by the Secretary of State." Such Determinations to be
legally enforceable and have the same status before the courts as Regulations.
