I was astonished to hear the Leader of Leeds Council come on national television and say that he had no choice but to reduce the pay for refuse collectors as the equal pay act forced him review pay and harmonise it (downwards as per usual unless you are a banker..) This is because using the method used to evaluate jobs there is little or no skill in wheeling a bin from the front of a house and onto a collection lorry as a result a collector who today earns 19k will end up with less than 14k? Well the Leader of Leeds Council is wrong and of course if the Council were to use proper evaluation system the impact the job or the action would have on the organisation or those contacts it serves would produce a better result. Employers also use Recruitment and Retention allowances or additional payments to bring pay up with market levels. It obviously becomes a problem if others who do similar jobs do not get the same payment and of course the solution to that is to give everyone doing the same sort of job the increase. So harmonising should mean bringing everyone up and not, like Leeds want to do, down! So good luck to the strikers up there for standing up for themselves!
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