RepsDirect No 109 8th January 2001



From
Head of Health, Roger Kline General Secretary, Roger Lyons

REVISED PAY OFFER FOR NON-PAY REVIEW BODY STAFF

8th January 2001

On 5th January 2001, MSF received from the Department of Health a revised pay offer for the third stage (2001/2002) of the three year-deal of 3.7% for those NHS staff that are not covered by a Pay Review Body (PRB). This mirrors the award for nurses and other professions that are covered by the PRB.

Under the previous version of the three-year deal non-PRB staff were set to receive RPIX (excluding housing costs) plus 0.5%. This would have resulted in an increase of between 2.5% and 2.7%. Therefore the value of the revised offer is approximately 25% greater than what was previously on the table.

There will also be a minimum increase of £380 per annum for those staff where the 3.7% increase would result in a figure less than this amount. This brings the minimum wage in the NHS to £4.20. This will result in a 4.5% increase for some MLA staff.

There will also be a 3.7% increase in London weighting, standby, on-call allowances, and emergency duty allowances. This is after several years of no national increases in some of these allowances.

The overall impact of all these changes on the NHS salary bill is forecast to be 4%. The same figure for the overall impact of the increases for the staff covered by the PRB.

As a result of the sustained campaigning by MSF during discussions over the three-year deal a working party was established to look and recruitment and retention issues affecting staff in Pathology.

The Department of Health has proposed restructuring the pay structure of trainee Medical Laboratory Scientific Officers (MLSOs), MLSO1 and MLSO2 grades. The Department of Health estimated that the cost of these changes would cost between £2.5 and £3.0m, benefiting 6000 MLSOs in total with some MLSOs enjoying increases of between 3% and 13% on top of the 3.7% increase.

The Department of Health has invited MSF to discuss and table amendments to these proposals for Pathology staff but contained within the overall level of money allocated.

It has subsequently been agreed to have a recalled meeting of the NAGST Working Party on 17th January 2001.

We welcome the Government's recognition of MSF's concerns and the positive response that it has made on this issue. However, we remain concerned that within Pathology, some grades of MLSOs, Cytology Screeners and Medical Laboratory Assistants (MLAs) have not been included in the Department of Health proposals. MSF remains committed to pursue these members concerns in these further talks and also through the Agenda for Change negotiations.

Similarly MSF are concerned that Medical Technical Officers (MTOs) who share similar recruitment and retention difficulties to our Pathology members have not been made a matching offer.

MSF raised the question of the proposed London and South East cost of living allowance and the effect expanding the PRB coverage will have on implementation of this allowance. The Department of Health would give no commitments on this allowance but accepted that this would be an issue for discussion when those groups moving into the PRB was known. The Department accepted that MSF would raise this issue through the Agenda for Change.

Dan Smith, Chair of the Pathology Committee, welcomed the offer as a result of MSF's very long running campaign. "For Pathology Staff we will be calling a meeting of the full Pathology Committee after the Working Party meeting but before the end of the month. I would assume the Committee will want to examine the small print of the offer and will want to ballot the membership."

For further information contact Colin Adkins, NHS Section Research Officer: phone 0207 939 7095 or by e-mail adkinsc@msf.org.uk