In a bid to sell their latest pay offer, CoSLA has concocted a soup of selective facts, spin, misdirection and plain lies.
In a document they title “Your Pay: The Reality” (an interesting choice of words) they show a selection of pay rates with %age increases. These increase rates are correct, however the way they are used to describe the benefit of the award to the workforce overall is a masterpiece of creative spin and dishonesty.
They say:
“With this new improved offer, 83% of our workforce (those who are earning up to £38,500) will receive an above inflation average 8% increase.
The full workforce will receive an above inflation average increase of 6.95%”.
The 83% of the workforce they refer to is all those up to SCP 65, the highest rate they quote. They then twice refer to “above inflation average” being above inflation which is a crafty way of trying to include those who got a lower award in with those who got a higher award, as if they all got some of that higher award.
This is complete distortion and misdirection. Referring to the average between you and someone else is simply dishonest. We should know what percentage of the workforce actually got an at or above inflation pay rise.
Secondly, our pay is settled for April of the current year. It is therefore the inflation rate at April that should be used to compare any award. In April 2023, The Office Of National Statistics CPI (the lowest measure) Annual rate of inflation was at 8.7%, whereas the RPI measure was at 11.4%. Subsequent rates of inflation will point to what might be needed next year. For Pension increases, the LGPS uses the CPI inflation rate from the previous September which in this case was 10.1%.
Only those at SCP 23 and below have been awarded at or above the April CPI rate of 8.7%. That is only around 17.8%.
So far from 83% getting an above inflation rise, 82.2% of council employees have again been offered a below inflation real terms pay cut.
In fact more than 50% of the workforce fall a full 1% short of CPI inflation – at 7.61% or less of an increase.
That is if you use the lower CPI rate of inflation and not RPI.
That and the facts that:
a) No additional funding has been provided to councils by the Scottish Government to fund any increase, so these meager improvements will be paid for by job and service cuts.
b) A key demand to see the lowest pay rate be increased to £15/hour has once again been kicked into the long grass.
means that we have to recommend that ALL our members thoroughly REJECT this offer in the consultative ballot and continue to support our schools and EY members striking on ALL our behalf.
Just how stupid do Council leaders think their employees are?
Every Local Government member should read the recent Bulletin and see what you can do to help us win on pay.
Bulletin
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