EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Agenda For Change Transitional points problem!!

Kawasaki, virtually all the points you list are breaches of the afc agreement which union reps should be taking to tribunal on behalf of their members. So even if you aren't a member find a rep and ask them how they expect to attract members while ignoring such blatant rule flouting by management.

1. The Afc team HAVE to provide staff with their profile to which the job was matched and the scoring sheet used in the match
(Job matching handbook section 8 subsection 6.3 "Only when consistency checking is complete and any apparent inconsistencies resolved should the matching form be issued to jobholders covered by the match, together with the relevant national profiles and a personal letter explaining the proposed pay banding and what to do in case of disagreement")

2. Due to the above FoI should not be necessary. But refusal almost certainly does put the trust in breach of the law since this is information that you should already have and there is no justifiable business defence

3. Budget limitations are not allowed to have any impact on matching outcomes

3(again?) total breach of afc agreement

4. possibly but can be reversed if you use the system

5. as 4. the matching system refers to "clients" not patients so you are quite entitled to say you provide "specialist" or "highly specialist" "clinical technical services".
A clinical technical service is "...maintaining or calibrating specialist or complex equipment for use on patients." and the 2 main management factors are only worth 120 points in total for top scorers

Ps if the trust have not issued you with the matching report and scores then no proper appeal can have been raised by you. The afc appeal time limit of 3 months starts when you are in receipt of the full matching information. SO appeal again with any change in banding backdated to 1/10/04

I would hope that you are in a union as they should be capable of taking management to the cleaners for abuses like those you list, and CAN obtain all the needed information under FoI

Management acting like this really makes me see red which is one of the reasons I became a union rep (and union reps ignoring things like this is something that makes me want to give it up)

Good luck
Paul

Paul,

I could be wrong, but I don't think the FoI Act is applicable for point 2. If anything it is more likely to be covered by the Data Protection Act, as it relates to personal information. A request to see your personal file would need to be made. I believe that there is a small fee to pay.

All information should be free! For good or ill, warts and all! Any information about an individual person, regardless about how "confidential", "sensitive", "medical" or whatever, should be made available to that person if s/he requests to see it. Personally, I don't see what right anybody has to hold information about another without first seeking that person's permission. People moan about copyright ... well what about the rights to a person's personal information? There's far too much of this ***** going on. Compulsory ID cards and DNA databases are just around the corner. All for our own good, of course (after all, Nanny does know best)!

The way things are going in this so-called democracy of ours (eg, where our Great Wise Leader is un-elected, and we're spied on by 4 million cameras, etc., etc.), next thing you know there will be yet another Government Agency, this time called the STASI! We, the Good Citizens (aka Sheep), are already being encouraged to spy upon our neighbours, all in the name of the "threat of terrorism" (not to mention "wheelie bin wars")! That's usually how it starts (check your history books ... while you're still allowed to have 'em, that is).

( Sorry Not re :Geoff Hannis )Matching information shouldn't have any personal info in it as it relates purely to the post not the post holder and as such wouldn't, I believe, be covered by the DPA. It should be possible to get hold of the full job matching report, which would include comments made by the matchers, using the FoI act, which may show up any imposed bias .

A matching panel should consist of 2 staff (union) representatives and 2 management (non union) representatives.What were the union reps doing allowing this situation to arise? If your banding score is 1 point within the band limits that's the band you get,having to be in the top half is a load of b*ll*cks!

Well said Dicky.
The whole process went wrong when they released the pay spines for each banding. As soon as this happened, every man and his dog tried to beef up there JD's to try and reach parity with their current renumeration. I saw people selling their soul's down the river. By definition, the JD's almost became personal 'dream' CV's. Now they have matched bands to existing salaries, the trusts could call peoples bluffs by trying to ensure the individuals concerned do what is in the hammed up JD's.
Watch this space.

That's just what the trust is doing here! One or two folks are now regretting what they claimed to do.

As as outsider not affected by all this stuff (except, of course, as a taxpayer paying for it all), may I just chime in to say that I witnessed it all going on at a hospital where I was lurking at the time. Those guys were pathetic! And yes, John, you're absolutely right about the ridiculous amount of padding that went into those Job Descriptions (not to mention all the time that was wasted on endless reviews and re-edits). Now I, too, sincerely hope that those blokes get hoist by their own petards! It would serve them right. Trouble is, of course (for them at least), it's still "business as usual".

Serves them right, too, Dicky.

After taking a break I've come back and noticed this thead and wonder if this could be a possibility.

I've been watching job vacancies on nhs jobs, comparing the job descriptions to mine and noticed that although under agenda for change a person doing a similar post should be on the same band it doesn't seem to be happening. Some trusts see Band 4 as the starting grade for someone without experience, while others see it as band 5 and I've even noticed one using band 6!

Could it be that the they have placed the new guy on the same band, since if they actually used a lower band they wouldn't be able to recruit anybody. Perhaps what needs to be done is that recruitment and retention should be applied to all ebme post to compare with the external market?

A certain amount of sadistic pleasure has been felt hearing of some of them squirming at what they are now expected to do (Its in your job description, you signed it!).