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Agenda for ChangeTechnicians’ Pay Band
ASU LIES
A number of members have sent us copies of the ASU leaflet on Agenda for change in which they falsely allege that a deal has been done on a national pay Band for ambulance Technician.
No agreement has been reached as yet on a pay band for Technicians.
The ASU leaflet is a combination of lies, half-truths and deliberate inaccuracies that they are trying to pass of as an informed circular.
This minority organisation is not recognised on the Shadow National Joint Council for ambulance service negotiations and as such is not involved in any negotiations on any ambulance issue.
The ASU is not recognised and does not have any national involvement in Agenda for Change. It is not on any evaluation committees, Knowledge and Skills Framework development groups, training groups or conditions of service groups.
It is little wonder that they have no concept of what is happening in these processes and from the misinformation in their circular they clearly do not understand the process of Agenda for Change.
The Negotiations
There is no secret about the national negotiations on the Technicians pay Band. UNISON’s submission to the national employers for a Band 5 post, management’s response and our counter arguments have all been available on the UNISON website since the 7 January 04. For full details see: ttp://www.unison.org.uk/healthcare/ambulance/index.asp
The Agreed Process
Branches were notified in January that this information is available. The current position is straightforward:
§ Firstly, the two ambulance Early Implementer sites in the Northeast and East Anglia are testing a Band 4 profile against their Technician job descriptions.
§ Secondly, three other services are completing Job Analyst Questionnaires based upon their own advanced Technicians role. The National Job Evaluation Working Party (JEWP) will evaluate these in the normal way.
§ Thirdly these profiles will then be agreed and release by the Joint Sectretaries for consultation. Again this is the normal process.
The decision to proceed with in this manner was agreed by the UNISON Ambulance National Sector committee in December. This is a delegate committee made up of ambulance members representing every UNISON region and the majority of ambulance grades.
Reaching Agreement on a Technician Band
A decision on how to proceed once the results of five evaluation sites has been concluded will be made by that same Ambulance Sector Committee.
Even when national profiles are produced the Agenda for Change process requires every trust to have a joint union /management panel who will be trained to match national profiles to local job descriptions. Therefore, the Pay Band for Technicians in your trust will be a matter of local determination using the national profiles as a benchmark.
Rather than the half truths from people not involved in the process we would advice members to check regularly with their branch secretaries, regions, national sector representatives, and UNISON head office.
Further information in addition to that on the UNISON Ambulance Website listed above can be found on the UNISON Agenda for Change Website on http://www.unison.org.uk/healthcare/a4c/index.asp
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