Employment Board “don’t feel any pressure” to appoint new leader

Thursday 10 January 2019

Senior members of the States Employment Board “don’t feel there’s any pressure” to appoint a new leader in the face of escalating civil service strikes and mounting challenges from other public sector workers over pension rates and pay reversals, it has emerged.

The SEB's Vice Chair, Constable Richard Buchanan, said yesterday that he and the Chief Minister are not actively looking to appoint another politician to steer the body responsible for setting States workers' pay, terms and conditions.

His comments come almost a month to the day that Senator Tracey Vallois announced her resignation as Chair of the Board in order to focus on her role as Education Minister, and mean that the body could face a gap in its leadership for much longer, despite entering its most challenging period.

Although the Constable doesn't "feel any pressure", this is not a sentiment shared by the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel, the group responsible for holding the SEB to account. They are asking Chief Minister Senator John Le Fondré who he will be appointing as Chair as well as calling him and the other members of the SEB to a public hearing where they will be grilled over how public sector negotiations have gone so far.

In a letter to the Chief Minister sent earlier this week, the panel's Chairman, Senator Kristina Moore, wrote: “Given the prospect of public sector strikes, it is important that the States Employment Board demonstrates clear and visible political leadership at this time. It is also important that the SEB and the Chief Minister provide clear answers on their policy and are held to account through the scrutiny process."

The questions over the lack of 'clear' leadership have been levelled at the Board as it comes under fire from numerous public sector staff groups, who are resorting to escalating strike action and formal disciplinary processes to take SEB to task over long-standing pay and pension disputes.

Pictured: Almost a month after Senator Vallois announced her resignation from the Board, a new Chair has not been appointed.

Despite the criticism, Constable Buchanan told Express that he and the Chief Minister, who holds the title of Chair in the interim, were "working closely together to resolve the problems in front of us" in the absence of a permanent SEB leader and that there weren't at present plans to change that arrangement.

“I don’t think the Chief Minister is minded to appoint someone else to that role – I think he feels that the current arrangement works extremely well, we work together very well… We may make some changes in the future but we don’t feel there’s any pressure to do that. We feel that we have an effective and functioning States Employment Board." 

The St. Ouen Constable emphasised that it is “important to have the backing of the Chief Minister” during what he described as a “difficult time” in which multiple SEB-related disputes have come to a head simultaneously.

The most immediate dispute on the Board's hands is the recent news that Jersey’s two civil service unions are planning whole days of strikes next week as a response to stilted negotiations over annual pay increases for 2018/19.

Pictured: Civil servants announced that they will be striking again next week as neither party backs down in the deadlocked dispute over pay.

A recent ballot also showed that Jersey's nurses have rejected the States' "final" pay offer as they say it is not in keeping with the rise in the cost of living.

At present, the States and the unions are at loggerheads as neither appear willing to relent. Unite the Union representative Nick Corbel previously warned Express that “action will continue” until the States revise their pay offer, while the States are sticking to their guns that “there is no more money”.

Indeed, this maxim was upheld by Constable Buchanan who described the current situation between SEB and unions as “a standoff."

However, civil servants aren’t the only staff members on the public payroll mounting a challenge against SEB. In the last few days, the Board’s “vexatious” appeal of the decision regarding disgruntled firefighters’ pension packets under the CARE scheme was knocked back by the Employment Tribunal. 

Constable Buchanan told Express that the Board is now “in the process of negotiating with” the Fire Service union, but that these talks will be “difficult” as the Board is trying to tread a line to “find a solution which keeps them happy, but doesn’t create an unfortunate precedent" and open the floodgates for claims from other public sector pay groups.

Pictured: The firefighters' pension row is just one of the problems faced by the States Employment Board.

The Constable explained that “if we make a settlement with [the Fire Service union], we could find that everyone else who’s been moved into CARE comes after us for the same settlement which could effectively render the whole scheme not operational and not fundable.”

However, this rationale was previously blasted by the Tribunal as an inadequate excuse for not fully engaging in negotiations.

Around 90 health workers have also made “a formal collective grievance with the States” after they were told the substantial pay rises they received as part of a £750,000 pay review conducted in November 2017 are going to be reversed in April of this year.

Constable Buchanan explained that the “dispute resolution process” over the failed pay review, which he termed as “a complete mess from beginning to end”, will take the form of an “independent tribunal” where a panel will make their recommendations to the Board.