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Prospect welcomes moves by Scottish Government on pay policy, but much still remains to be done

Prospect welcomed the moves announced in the Scottish Budget yesterday to end the two tier pay system for Scottish public sector workers, something on which the Union had campaigned for the last two years, however whilst also welcoming the ongoing inflation proofing award for staff, Prospect remains concerned that the progress to pay restoration, promised on numerous occasions by the Government, remains glacially slow.

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The policy published yesterday as part of the Scottish Budget sets a number of key policy goals

• providing a guaranteed basic pay increase of 3 per cent for public sector workers who earn below £80,000 

• continuing the requirement for employers to pay staff the real Living Wage, now set at £9.30 per hour

• providing a guaranteed cash underpin of £750 for public sector workers who earn  £25,000 or less

• limiting to £2,000 the maximum basic pay increase for those earning £80,000 or more

• allowing flexibilities for employers to use up to 0.5 per cent of pay bill savings on baseline salaries for addressing clearly evidenced equality issues in existing pay and grading structures.

Speaking on behalf of Prospect, Scottish National Secretary Richard Hardy said "we are very glad that our campaigning on the issue of the two tier pay system has been succesful, we spoke at length on this issue with the First Minister, and other senior cabinet colleagues, and we welcome the move, which we felt created a false view of "deserving" and "un deserving" public servants."

"We recognise that the budget timetable this year has hampered the Scottish Government's preparations and planning for the budget, and to an extent their ability to even set out a full costed budget, however we remain disappointed that the promised "journey to pay restoration" is again slowed considerably, whilst 3% certainly protects our members wages, and the underpin additionally helps low paid members, real progress to pay restoration remains slow" he concluded.

Prospect and the other Civil Service unions will now engage with all the Scottish pay bargaining units and we will keep members informed of further developments