EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Agenda For Change Agenda for change. Status report on Profiles

Athur

It all stems back to a case some Speech and Language Therapist mounted regarding pay parity. In the 80's SLT were mostly women and they thought that their jobs were comparable to Senior Pharmacists and Clinical Psycologists who were mainly men. The SLT's took exception to earning a lot less so some mounted a legal challenge to the DOH which failed. They then took their case to the European Court of Appeal and in 1998 they got a landmark ruling. Some SLT's received up to £70,000 in backdated pay.

It was acknowledged that SLT's weren't the only staff group whose pay didn't reflect the duties carried out and hence how AfC was born. You can read numerous articles on this case on the internet. Interestingly one union reckons that SLT's will come out badly from AfC.

Payback time Eh? I know of SLTs, working in the hospital where I worked, that purchased a home based on their backpay......

Good afternoon all, it is a while since I last posted on this topic, but I can offer an update.
Firstly - MATCHING interviews and I say matching not eveluation interviews for this profession have only just been completed here. As the manger of this service I am reasonably confident that based on the interviews, additional information submitted in support and the matching panels qestioning that matches have been made all ranges of staff in this service here. We have yet to get the results of these matches as the data is currently being quality assured and confirmed etc. I DO NOT expect to have the results before the end of May. I know that this seems a long time overall in the scheme of things but no one should underestimate the ammount of time this process is taking and does take. The view that has been taken here is better to be slow and correct than fast and wrong.
As to specfic roles such as anesthetics etc I can only say that matches etc will be to the range of profiles currently on offer, but as a minimum I would expect such roles to drop to the band 6 profile.
We here have said all along that we will make results known when we have them, so watch this space.
At the moment we can not comment on any R&R issues since we do not (as I suspect so do most of the other EI sites clinical engineering services) yet know if it will effect us.
I am not sure if all this helps or not, I leave it to you to decide.

Any results regarding job matching at your trust yet, Paul?

Since it's now the middle of June and there's no posting from Paul - must we assume that there's a problem ?

Dear All,
I have just received a letter from my union steward saying that the Suderland AfC seems to have been badly handled and the fan is turning very brown and smelly. It seems from this letter that middle management were doing short cuts and trying to save time in the short term and money in the longterm bygrouping together lots of staff groups and creating a generic match at a low grade.
The Whole management team are being asked questions and people right up to the top of the NHS executive are being asked to explain what went wrong.
What does this do to the AfC plan?
Robert

Penny pinching is bound to happen when you consider the pressures on some trusts to make savings. I wonder whether the management at Sunderland will actually admit things have gone wrong.

I've been reading about a number of strikes and walkouts involving a different staff groups at Sunderland - these have had very low-key coverage in the general-media.

At a recent meeting with HR to discuss the re-grading of one of my technicians I have learnt that under AfC only your current salary and not the maximum on your current scale is protected. (unlike any previous NHS re grading) This was confirmed by our assistant director of HR - The Trust's AfC lead. Has anyone else heard this? It's more bad news, especially for recent appointments.

Even worse are that there are no cost of living rises on protected pay if it applies - no cost of living and only current pay protected.

AFC has been "temporarily postponed" here pending an investigation on what has gone wrong. However, the lead people responsible for afc at this trust have already attendeded a meeting with the shadow exec where it appears that the trust has carried out the process correctly! Further investigations are currently taking place to find out what is wrong with the system. (As if we don't already know!!!)