Apr 20 - Unite Corrects Comments Made By GGCA President
Unite’s Government Convenor, Albert Hewitt, has told the press that there were “certain inaccuracies” in the arguments put forward in last Thursday’s GBC Viewpoint by the GGCA President Ms Wendy Cumming (pictured, left).
A statement from the union lists the following points:
“In the first instance, allusions were made towards the fact that academic entry requirements within the Civil Service for entry level AA posts were more stringent than those of the GDC. This is factually incorrect given that Civil Servant AA posts require applicants to be in the possession of 2 GCSEs of which one must be English in contrast to those of the GDC whereby applicants required having in their possession 3 GCSEs of which one also had to be English. In fact, when AO posts had been identified as the entry level position for certain departments, the academic criteria set for both the Civil Service and the GDC have been of equal standing; that being of 5 GCSE (inclusive of English).
“Secondly, Ms Cumming stated that GDC employees were eligible to apply to promotions up to two grades up the hierarchy which is also incorrect; GDC employees can only apply one grade up at a time as is the norm within the Civil Service. Furthermore, on obtaining a promotion, the incumbent would then have to wait a further 2 years prior to applying to any other promotion. This is also the current norm within the Civil Service.
“Historically, for over 20 years, GDC employees have felt discriminated for a variety of reasons when compared to their Civil Service counterparts and colleagues. It was not unheard of for a GDC employee working side by side with a Civil Service colleague doing exactly the same work within for example the Housing Department, Finance Department or ETB environment to earn less and to have inferior terms and conditions to their counterpart as a consequence of the nature of their employment relationship. This was further compounded by the fact that Civil Servants also enjoyed membership of the Final Salary Pension whilst their GDC counterparts had to pay towards their occupational pension.
“As a consequence of the dissolution of the Final Salary Pension, no further barriers were imposed on GDC employees in becoming fully fledged Civil Servants. In these respects, elements of remuneration, terms and conditions were normalised but at the insistence of the GGCA union to the then previous administration, a caveat was introduced whereby the integrated staff were to become ring fenced Civil Servants in their respective departments and posts.”
Unite the Union says it will continue to campaign for the full integration of these 155 ring-fenced Civil Servant and remaining GDC employees in order to “eliminate the last vestiges of discrimination and segregation” amongst these two sets of workers in the same manner that it stopped the discrimination of local employees within the MOD in the 1970s, “whereby even toilets were segregated according to status.”
{fcomment}
