General Features

Do you agree or disagree with the strike?

malcolm nichol
As a refuse collector with Angus Council on £15500 and about to take a cut!! I would say to anyone who knocks the refuse collectors, you go do the job in all weathers soaked to the skin,out in the morning in minus temperatures and no toilet facilities,try pulling heavy bins over piles of snow or between tightly parked cars,etc,see how long you last!See what you think when your union in this case Unison get into bed with management.I can only speak for the refuse collectors but I support every one of you who is losing through this.No ones cost of living goes down.All this while management are sitting patting themselves on their back giving themselves pay rises thinking what a good job we are doing.

Bill
Yes I agree. It appears that the Liberal Tory pact running this council has presided over a mess. I heard they handed a large contract of work to a private sector company who are now recruiting more staff. In the meantime it appears they are doing their own workers over

anonymous
Unfortunately 'HR person' you comments only hold up if they are borne of reality. The council hasn't always shown itself to have objective managers who treat everybody equally; nor has the council always consulted meaningfully as it is required to by law. I think you will find the main objection people have is that executive officers are rarely subject to the same expectations and standards as other lower paid workers. Will the chief exec in Birmingham have his pay decreased under performance management for failing to implement single status consistent with equal pay? Will he he have his pay decreased under performance management for failing to consult meaningfully with trade unions? Will he have his pay decreased for costing Birmingham businesses various sums in delayed payments of invoices because of the implementation of a new financial processing system? Will his pay decrease under performance management because of the cost and inconvenience to Birmingham people through not proposing a fair and reasonable offer to his workforce? I think no is the answer to all these questions. Until the answer is yes neither you or anybody else has the right to undermine the concerns of any employee at Birmingham council.

Alan
I attended a good rally with my workmates and was quite disgusted at the way the councillors behaved, lording it over the poor of Birmingham (happily making them poorer). Their comeuppance; who on earth in their right minds would vote for such idiotic prigs again? They don’t seem to have the intelligence value of an amoeba. All they appear to be good at is lying and blaming everyone else.

HIGHWAYS SUPERVISOR LANCASTER CIRCUS
SINGLE STATUS IS NOT COSTING THE COUNCIL A SINGLE PENNY THEY ARE SIMPLY ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAULA

chris
how can they lower peoples wages the must be breaking the law if they do this

anonymous
Having heard stephen hughes on radio bbc wm on the morning of 05/02/08 it is disappointing he clearly doesn't understand the pay and grading review he is implementing. Mr Hughes stated it was the trade unions' fault because of the job evaluation scheme that was used. If he understood the process properly he would know that the council identify what they would pay people after the job evaluation results, not before. As such someone with, for example 500 points could be paid £20000 or a different amount, say £25000 or even more or less. It was entirely the council's decision to offer pay at levels that mean people will experience pay cuts. If we have a chief executive in Birmingham who doesn't understand what he's implementing we should demand his resignation- people of Birmingham deserve better than Stephen Hughes.

HR Person
Some comments to the below quotes: "I am not stupid I know after the first two increments I have a snow balls chance in hell to reach the top of my new grading." Your refering to compentency based pay which will be introduced in place of time served increments. Time served increments generally reward older workers and punish younger workers - this is illegal and ageist. The competencies will be in line with requirements and performance in the job? For example its unlikely you will be required to throw a car 300m in order to prove your worth an increment. I would also add that its extremely likely your senior management team will have input into the competencies - why would they make it unreachable and thus increase disquiet and grievances? As a manager yourself you know this is not an objective of management."i could be asked by my manager to be at work at 7am in the morning or stay untill 7pm" Yes you could be asked to do so, same as you could have been a year ago. Doesn't mean you have to and if they require you to work from 7 to 7 they would have to consult with you. I would also draw your attention to the working time directive. Assuming you work 7 to 7, five days a week then you would be working 60 hours a week. You are protected by law from doing so unless you 'opt out' - which is entirely your choice."and I am being told my wage could go down if I don't do well in a PDR" This would be under performance management, not a PDR - which is more about future development. I have previously advised on demotions and can ensure you that it was a decision not taken likely and only after many chances to improve and consideration was given. "possibility that i could be asked to work anywhere in the city" Again yes you could be asked - like anyone could. Doesn't mean you have to. If your manager wishes to permanently relocate your place of work they must consult with you and the relevant unions. I would also state you should check your previous contract of employment. The vast majority of staff already have this clause included within it. So its nothing new.

Paul
I agree with the strike.. Fortunately my salary has stayed the same, but my terms and conditions are still going to be changed. I could end up working any 5 of the 7 days. I could be working at any council place in the city that my grade matches. The senior managers have not taken part in this single status exercise. People like the chief executive will remain the same. The councillors who push this through all voted themselves pay rises last year, rises of £45,000 plus to sit on their bums in the council chambers... Single Status is supposed to be equal and fair pay, its completely the opposite.

M B
I agree with the strike action as I think we need to make a stand and show the Council that we mean business and the way we are feeling. If just still back and do nothing they can get away with anything.

Anonymous Manchester
I agree with the action taken, I only wish our union supported us through the same procedure. I work for Manchester City Council and have recently gone through Job Evaluation and stand to lose in the region of £6,500. Some of my collegues are losing more! All the union say is that you have got 3 years to sort something out! Job Evaluation is just another way of the Council saving more money for their 'trips' abroad on Council business....my eye!Also, a comment that came from the union was, that it doesn't have to be morally right just lawful and it is...explain that one.Good luck to all concerned.

Debbie
I earn 16,000 a year before tax, I take home £1012 a month. I live on my own I pay five hundred a month for a flat. My council tax is just under £100 pound. I pay £75 of it a month. My gas is £37. My water is £33. My electric is £34. My food bill is about £120 per month. My bus pass is £42.25. Thats an out lay of about £842. which leaves me with £160 a month to buys clothes, go on holiday, savings and emergencies. Please don't tell me I am well overpaid. And now they are stopping my earning potential - and I am being told my wage could go down if I don't do well in a PDR. Now you know why I AM STRIKING.

Anonymous
Definately agree with the strike. I think its absolutely disgusting how the council think they can do this. People earn a wage and with that, they have a mortgage, houehold bills, a family to feed etc. they rely on a certain amount of money to cover that monthly expense. People live upto their means, and with every possible expense increasing everytime we blink, any idiot would agree that a pay cut can't be justfied!!

Julie Kelly
I am a social work manager who has received a substantial pay rise ( aprox 6k per annum) I think I am entitled to the increase, as are my staff, however I am not willing to accept this at the detriment to my colleagues ( the care assistants who will eventually god willing care for me, the teaching assistants who ensure my children are adequately supported through their education, the cooks and cleaners who ensure that my children go to school in a safe and nurturning environment, the social work assistants who work their asses off day after day, the folk who collect my refuse and so on and so on) . I am disappointed to see that there wasn't as many 'winners' out, I believe that although my own profession (deservedly so) had an increase we need to support our colleagues. the council have bet that if they create enough winners there won't be enough support for those losing.I am not stupid I know after the first two increments I have a snow balls chance in hell to reach the top of my new grading. I have already been served my notice for failing to sign my contract and as a previous contributer has said 'why don,t you leave, I have two interviews with neighbouring authorities. If we all ove they may find themselves without the services they need. The NHS has went through this process and it cost millionns of pounds the council needs to accept that this will cost and 'robbing peter to pay paul' is unacceptable.

Caroline
I am a council worker whose pay hasn't been affected but for the first time in 41 years of working I have taken strike action today in protest at the way the new pay & grading system has been handled and to support my colleagues who will lose out. The Conservative council has lost the plot completely, with the pay & grading procedure being a shambles throughout. Thank God I only have a few years left to retirement!!!!

Sam
Personally I suport the Council. Why should binmen be paid over £30k!!

Margaret
I'm pleased to see that Birmigham workers have taken this stand. Let's hope they provide some inspiration to those of us who have been ground down by the ludicrous job evaluation process for the last year or more, and are still anxiously awaiting the result. I just don't understand why we can't sue the Councils for breach of contract. You agree to do a job for a certain wage, possibly even leaving another job to better your situation, and now you find you're on several thousand less than the first job. It's just plain wrong.

Lesley Walker
I was there today so i agree wholehartedly with the strike. I will not loose pay but with the new grading system i can not earn any more in the future,i could be asked by my manager to be at work at 7am in the morning or stay untill 7pm and there is also the possibility that i could be asked to work anywhere in the city.Some may say i am lucky to have a job,yes i am but who will foot the bill for all of that travel if i have to wokk elsewhere???

The Truth
As someone who was involved with single status a few years ago I find it highly ironic that the unions who have now come to 'save the day' are the same ones who boycotted this. It is a requirement by Whitehall that single status is implemented in local government, it is not a decision ANYONE in Birmingham can either opt out of or ignore. I know from personal experience that the unions chose not to attend meetings, advised members not to participate in the process and consultation and now, suprise suprise, people (myself included) have found out they are losing. If you are given an opportunity to speak, but chose to gag yourself how can you then cry foul? The unions demand equal pay. Fine. What process/procedure do they want to implement? Ask YOUR union rep. Ask them what EXACTLY they would implement. I absolutely guarantee you will get some flim flam answer. As someone who is losing a lot of money I can sympathise with those affected and, again from personal experience, I know management have made a mess of certain things but I also know the unions must share the blame on this one.

ap
Why do we need "equality" in pay when, due to equal opps. being in place for the last 40 years, any gender can apply for any job so why don't women apply to be bin-persons if they want the money and job evaluation scores them identically? All council jobs that I see are "open to job-share" etc. It is a fact of life that some of the most unpleasant jobs are the worst paid. Why do councils have to be different? Thanks to this mess your typical council-employed family will be stuffed. The full-time, higher paid breadwinner will get thousands of pounds less and the part-time partner will get a couple of pence an hour extra. I work at Nottinghamshire County Council and will be losing £8,000 - what happened to the salary on which I decided to leave my old job for?

a ogden
agree should not happens people need pay rises not pay cuts

Anne Quinn
Well done all that went on strike today i am behind you all the way I know this did not come easy for many I hope this shows the council how strong the feelings are and makes them think again. The people of Birmingham deserve better!!

Christine
As a taxpayer I am glad to see that monies are being used efficiently i.e. binmen not getting huge bonuses and carers getting a fair wage. Maybe some staff have been overpaid and the City has finally caught up with them!

Anonymous
I just like to point out to 'Blame the union!!!!' that pay and grading is a legal requirement, the unions agreed to a very different package, money was set aside many years ago to cope with inequality and this money was plundered and wasted by Conservative councillors. The bin men have NOT agreed a pay deal and nowhere in the council was a normal service operating and the council's website is nothing but a misleading 'wish list' of service provision. The amount of people attending the rally wasn't representative of the real total - we are just like you and had to care for young familes or keep essential services running -I have lost £3,000 myself and cannot get a pay rise or any increment for three years /five years. Even after that, I have been downgraded so far that even if I rose a grade I would still loose £1000. Have you REALLY any idea at all how hard we work for you and how much extra work we take on to maintain your life?

Anonymous
Good luck everyone with your strike. The councillors are a bunch of clowns. It is a totally unfair and unacceptable pay structure. I support you all!

Nichola
I hope that those people looking out of the council house window today, who were taunting picketers at the rally, are really proud of themselves. Obviously they are not affected, but what goes around comes around and maybe one day they will need our support!

Jane Rose
Yes I agree with the strike, because I have worked for the council for over 20 years and my contract has been torn up and I am now expected to do the same job but for £12,000 less. Thousands of people are losing a lot of money. They are life-changing amounts of money for people and their families. People whose wages are going up - are only going up by small amounts - losers are losing massive amounts. The whole evaluation system has been flawed and in my view it is scandalous. We didn't want to strike, but had no alternative. The Council is only interested in offering a deal to the binmen, because that is a service so valued by the public. People should vote this Conservative leadership out at the next election, for their underhand and ruthless way of dealing with this. They should have frozen peoples wages and started new people on the new grades. The worry of all this has made a lot of people very ill. If you accept a contract for a job, which pays a certain amount, then that should not be able to be just torn up when the employer feels like it.

Mac
I am disgusted at the state that the strikers have left Victoria Square in after their rally at lunchtime, there's discarded paper and placards everywhere.

Jason
If you don't like it then leave, simple as that, there are plenty of other jobs out there and plenty of people who'll be happy to take your job at the reduced pay.The union requested the review and now they moan at teh outcome because it doesn't suit them. Just shutup and get on with it, if you don't like it then just hand in your notice. Life is to short to be moaning about money.

Ebrahim Rashidi
I was just in strike, it was great action shown how unison and members stick together and powerful we are.I am shop steward and proud of unison and council staffs who supported us.

Stephen Hughes
I agree wholeheartedly with strike action

Dawn
Strike action should have been the last resort, we should have tried work to rule etc first. But hopefully the council will now listen.

Matt Raine
Gas bills up, Electric up, Petrol and Bus tickets Up- Pay going down! Good luck with your strike today, people in Birmingham deserve decent public services- not privatised ones with a poorly paid staff.

Blame the Union!!!!
Who was it who pushed through this national review and the proposal of single status???? Wasn't it heavily backed by the Unions??? So why moan at the council at having to do the review and the outcome!!! The idiots at the unions just thought that it would mean everyone got lovely big wage rises by bring all peoples wages up but without a thought that the councils across the country would not have the money for this!!!It hasn't just been a Birmingham issue every authority has had to do it maybe Birmingham are at fault by the way they've gone about it but sometimes that unions need to get real.The strange thing that I find is that people are saying about all this money they are losing but there isn't anything said about what money they were on or will be on. I'd heard a report that a binman at Birmingham could earn something like £26,000 a year and then an extra £13,000 a year in bonuses!!! £39,000 a year for a binman!!!! I can see why there needs to be a review and some wages reduced if money is being wasted like that!!!!

darth
The idea of single status seems sensible - each person being paid for the job that they do. However, this relies on a group of councillors having a full understanding of the myriad of different jobs that are done. In an early manifestation of the single status recommendations, teaching assistants were to be paid less that lunchtime supervisors. In many schools, teaching assistants are involved in lesson planning and in school policy decision making - it seems that the councillors suggesting single status thought that teaching assistants' job was cleaning brushes and putting up displays. In my view teaching assistants pay should be on an entirely separate scale alongside teachers and headteachers.

rashid
the councillors appear to be inept having read that they yet can't pay their own staff a fair wage. Utter sham

Liz Pritchett
Good for you Birmingham Hope the strike, makes you council take another look at this unfair pay structure. I sadly work for Nottinghamshire,where Unison got into bed with management. I'm looking at a 6k loss. Happy days.

Wise
Can nobody see that this situation is created by a council, that opposes the present government and will do all it can to create discent to obtain power!

Branch sec wigan unison
business and commerce need to understand that these actions by the council will mean people will not have the money to spend in your "wonderful shopping centre"cost of living is going up so cutting wages will have a seriouse inpact on business as for the equal pay issue after 30years time it was put right it's nothing less than criminal good luck time for a national strike on the issue

Catherine
I can assure you that 90% of the City Council's Homeless Service will be striking today. We do a thankless job under difficult circumstances with a complete lack of investment in social housing and not enough suitable property to meet demand. We are loosing £3000 each from our salary, how would you feel if after 25 years service your pay is cut by that much and they council try and enforce a new contract on you saying you will work anywhere in the city, at any time or day of the week, and you will do any job they tell you to do? - THIS IS NOT ON!!

Jan Russell
Everyone is talking about the money they will loose but no one has focused on the other issues which are just as important. Ask the council about the clause which we are expected to agree to which can see us transfered to any place of work with little or no notice. Ask them about performance related pay which seems to have been designed so that we can only fail to hit targets and so take a pay cut every year reguardless of how hard we work. Ask them why they prefer to treat their workforce like cattle rather than talking to us like real employees.

Annonymouse
I am a manager with Birmingham City Council. It is true that staff are lsoing thousands of pounds. My colleague is losing £11,000 with another losing £9,000. This means thier income is now lower thant their staff. My own staff have an increase equivalent to 0.04 pence per day. Many 'increases' in pay quoted actually result in a freezing or reduction of salary.

Brian Maynard
Isn't it time to reorganise the City Council? It's so big, and always struggling. I shudder to think how much money must be wasted through bureaucracy and inefficiency.

rosemary cragg
i agree with the strike, good luck

dawn james
noboby knows how hard a care asistant work for only 8500 pounds per year how little are we worth yes to strike

luke
i think its disgusting how everyone is going on strike.They should stop it all. I am 11 years old and we cant go to school because of this!!

paul
people dont go on strike for fun so what the council has done to cause this must be seriously at fault.

levens
This is 2008...not 1908how about the managemnet have a pay freeze for the next five years so the rest of the work force can have pay in line with living costs

John
By going on strike you're not helping anyone, and it'll only look bad on yourselves, but believe what you wish.

leah
i just want to point out that out of all the 80 schools thAT CLOSED FOR 24 HOURS WHY COULDN'T IT BE MYN. SWANSHURST!

The Pixel
For a lot of council employees it's not about the money anymore. It's about the incompetance, bad timing and poorly planned introduction of a some seriously heavyweight systems the council are steamrollering through. They are unhearing, uncaring and clueless.

Jan Lewis
I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the dispute, but I worry about the very vulnerable people who may be left high and dry by the care services

iain
the strike action that is taking place in birmingham by coucil workers is not just about the loss of wages by some workers. the council have had to legaly do a pay review to bring about equal pay to workers that employ mostly women, & bring thier wages in line with other council workers that usually employ mostly men. for years councils have paid the male oriented jobs a lot more for doing jobs that were equal in skills to the women.[ eg.carers v roadcleaners] even with these new paygrades the pay is still not equal. with no mention of when they will meet up. also we have to accept many conditions to get these new grades, and as a night worker who earns less than the national average wage we find it hard to manage money on a weekly basis.

dave budden
Totally support the strike,the council is robbing the not very rich to pay the even less rich as little more,its supposed to be about equal equal pay,why are most of the losers women? A total botched job from start to finish.cllr rudge should hang his head in shame.

Sue Jordan
I will be on strike tomorrow. I am a bursar at a primary school. I support all those who have had a salary cut. HOw are they going to pay their mortgages. My salary will not be cut but that is due to the Governing Body protecting my salary. others in the council are not that lucky.