Q
82Jim
Knight: Good. Will you allow me one more question? It was
interesting that in both the memorandums submitted there were concerns
about clause 216 and issues being introduced that had not been referred
to the Secretary of State. I would like to give the union and the
employer side the opportunity to summarise briefly those concerns so
the Committee can understand them properly.
Joan
Binder: Can I clarify that you are talking about
clause 215, not 216?
Jim
Knight: It says clause 216 in both of your
briefings.
Joan
Binder: It is clause 216, I am
sorry. David
Algie: We would like to
see—
Jim
Knight: It is clause 215, “Consideration of other
matters by
SSSNB”. David
Algie: We welcome clause 215(1), but have concerns
about clause
215(3).
Jim
Knight: That is
right. David
Algie: We feel that having to seek consent from the
Secretary of State will inhibit the body. Perhaps Brian would like to
add to
that. Brian
Strutton: What has been explained to us as the
process that lies behind clause 215 is that the Secretary of State
cannot give ratified orders on anything that he has not referred to the
body in a formal letter. Unions and employers have found it hard to
reconcile that with our understanding of how negotiations
work. As
you can see, we are all long-in-the-tooth negotiators, ladies excepted,
and we know the way in which negotiating bodies have to operate. Things
happen very quickly. The ability to strike a deal while parties are
ready is crucial. The idea that having reached the point of agreement,
we have to seek permission from the Government machine to strike the
deal seems to us to be a barrier to the proper operation of a
negotiating body. Given that the negotiating body has the Department
sitting in as observers and that it has an independent chair who is a
conduit to Ministers, we fail to understand why in addition we must
seek permission to reach agreements. The independent chair and the
Department are in the room to ensure that we are told if we are doing
anything inappropriate. Therefore the requirement to seek permission in
clause 215(3) should simply be
deleted. Peter
Allenson: May I add to that the concern about having
to refer to the Secretary of State before something is referred to the
School Support Staff Negotiating Body? As democratic organisations, we
have to consult members. One way in which we do that to start with is
to bring a claim together in a normal negotiating situation. As Brian
has indicated, we try to get our understanding clear from the start on
how we can do that. Unless we have a mandate from our members, we are
not able to operate in the normal way. That is important to us. The
question of recognition is also an emotive subject for us. Both are
things that our lay representatives will have to be consulted about in
a detailed way shortly. We will be looking out to see if the right
things happen at the right
times.
Q
83Alison
Seabeck: You talk about the mismatch between support
staff, teaching assistants and local authority staff and about how that
has changed. Having been a member of support staff when my children
were small, I understand what you are saying. There are also issues
about equal pay. There seem to be no direct comparators for teaching
assistants and support staff to enable pay levels to be properly
assessed. You may correct me if I am wrong. Do you see this negotiating
body as a mechanism that will ensure that there are equal pay rights?
That will have cost implications for
employers. Christina
McAnea: We certainly see it as a way of delivering
equal pay for the future. This continues to be a live issue. We would
like to have some sort of job evaluation scheme, or a method to analyse
what jobs are worth, with which we and employers feel comfortable. It
should be written and developed specifically for schools, or at least
take schools into consideration. There has not always been success in
using the local government structures to deliver and analyse jobs in
schools because they can be quite different. The context is different.
The working hours and the working year are different. It has been quite
difficult to do that.
There are
comparators. At the moment, if you are in a community school there is
nothing to stop people taking an equal pay claim across to someone who
works in the local authority, particularly if you have been evaluated
under the same job evaluation scheme. There is an issue about whether
that will continue to be the case. We will probably need to get some
updated legal advice, given that the situation in equal pay changes
weekly, if not daily, about what happens once the body is up and
running and staff in schools are then paid from a different source and
there is a different set of negotiations. What would be the impact on
their ability to take equal pay claims
then?
Q
84Alison
Seabeck: Does anyone have anything to add to
that? Brian
Strutton: Just to make one thing clear. Currently,
school support staff do have comparators. Between our three unions we
are running about 70,000 equal pay claims in local government. A lot of
those are school support staff. All school support staff have the
opportunity to raise those issues with us. Half of local authorities
have implemented equal pay structures now and the rest have got plans
to do so. As Christina rightly said, part of what we are doing is
designed to resolve those types of issues. It will do so by building a
bespoke system for school support
staff. Joan
Binder: Currently, for foundation and VA schools,
where the governing body is the employer, the equal pay issue is just
across the individual school. You cannot have comparators from outside
a foundation or a VA school.
Q
85Alison
Seabeck: Thank you for clarifying that. The reason I am
asking is that we have a potential equalities Bill coming through. We
are getting slightly different advice on this issue from people
lobbying on that. We talked about national and local differences and
the need for local flexibility. What are the local issues that would in
your view require the scheme to be varied? Can you identify examples of
things that would be so local that they would require the scheme to
change? Brian
Strutton: What do you mean by
scheme?
Q
86Alison
Seabeck: Mrs. Binder said that she thought
there needed to be flexibility in order to adapt for local differences.
I just wondered whether anyone could identify what they might be. Can
anyone give us an
example? Brian
Strutton: I can think of
some. Joan
Binder: There can be a range. Are we talking about
pay? Are we talking about terms and conditions?
Q
87Alison
Seabeck: You were fairly broad in your statement. I do not
know. That is why I am asking you what you
meant. Joan
Binder: I was fairly broad because within the support
staff working group we have used the word “flexibility”
without going into any particular definition of what our individual
understanding of that is. If we are looking at what might be up to a
school or a local authority to determine, there may be elements of
something like sick pay where there would be a common basis—am I
talking totally off the top of my head here Brian? He is going to drop
me in it later.I do not have a professional background in this. In
terms of deciding things at local level, it is more to do with
responding.
Q
88Alison
Seabeck: When you say “local”, do you mean
the
school? Joan
Binder: I mean the local employer. For me, local
means employer, whether it is the school or the local authority. That
for me is the “local” in the “local level”.
The question about the flexibility that you might need has just gone
out of my head. There might be issues such as how much you pay your
cleaners. The going rate, depending on the area, might be x. However,
the framework that we are setting out might suggest that you pay your
cleaners within a range that x does not fall into. The school would
need flexibility to be able to say, “In order to attract and
keep cleaners, we have got to match that
level.” Brian
Strutton: Christina will come back at you on that
one,
Joan. Christina
McAnea: We feel that flexibility can be built into
it. We might say to schools that we do not envisage a situation where
they will be told, “This is exactly what your structure will
be.” Schools will be able to determine what their staffing
structure is, what level of staff they want and what jobs they want the
staff to do. That can all be determined at school level. All that we
are saying is that once you have done that, here are national
frameworks that will help you to decide: these are the levels of
responsibility; this is the level of work I want them to do; this is
what the pay range should be and it will be a range of pay. Issues such
as the ability to recruit and retain staff in an area where you have to
pay more can all be built into it. We have done that in other sectors.
In the higher education sector we have a specific framework agreement
that has recruitment and retention built into it. All of that is
entirely possible and we
believe that it still leaves sufficient flexibility for schools to be
able to have whatever staffing structure they want and whatever level
of staff they want.
Q
89Mr.
Gibb: I would like to briefly pick up on that last point.
This is a question for Joan Binder. Leaving aside the issue of pay, is
there anything in these provisions about the School Support Staff
Negotiating Body that prevents you from doing what you want to do in a
foundation school? Are there issues there that make it inflexible in
terms of the job itself, rather than the
pay? Joan
Binder: It is very difficult to give a definite
answer at this stage, because we are still in the early stages of
trying to describe what is going to be in the eventual framework.
Provided that we are still talking about flexibility and, using
Christina and Brian’s analogy, that we are still envisaging that
flexibility being built into the framework, then I am hopeful that it
will be possible for schools to be able to do what they are doing now
in terms of employment and deploying their support
staff.
Q
90Mr.
Gibb: How might it not work? Can you give an example of
how it could be inflexible in terms of the job description or
employment?
Joan
Binder: It could be inflexible if the job description
for, say, a site manager was fixed, and if schools did not have a site
manager who did exactly that, then they would have to find one who
could do that, if you see what I mean. I do not think that any of us
want that. We all want something whereby a school—because the
term “site manager” can cover a whole range of jobs in
different schools—would be able to say, “Oh yes, my site
manager does this bit, this bit and this bit. Therefore, that is his
job description and contract and therefore that equates to this pay
range.” A bigger school might say, “My site manager does
all of those and a few extra bits from here. This is his contract and
his pay range is therefore something else.” That is a
description of what we are trying to aim at. If we can produce that
then I am hopeful that, provided there is employer-level flexibility,
schools can
manage.
The
Chairman: That concludes proceedings for this afternoon.
Thank you very much for coming along.
Ordered,
That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Ms
Butler.) 3.44
pm Adjourned
till Tuesday 10 March at half-past Ten
o’clock.
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