EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Agenda For Change Nearly a year

I think and i believe the general concensus is that Band 6 is the correct result for MTO 3. (this is what i am after initially getting band 5). I can't understand though how you lose out been as the top of Band 6 was much more than top of MTO 3 (brownie points included i recall). Anyway you most definately are not required to pay back anything, in fact try working if you are due any back pay. Look at 01/10/04, calculate the difference between your actual pay on that day and the next closest point on Band 6 at the time. Convert this to a monthly sum and multiply by the number of months since then. Bear in mind uplifts to the bandings along the way and to the MTO scale up until it finished. Assuming a positive difference between the two, you shall be paid that sum. If as you state you had a pay cut then this sum is negative but you are not required to pay this back. You would however be entitled to Protection up until the loss is rectified by the next pay event/uplift/increment.
Topper

This may seem a bit confused. I was an MTO2 in 2004 but had started a grievance procedure to be upgraded to MTO3 well before AFC was even heard off. The upgrade proceeded alongside AFC. I was given the upgrade in late 2004 but the salaries dept has looked at my pay in 2004 when I was an MTO2 and moved me across to the nearest assimilation point for band6. Because this assimilation point on band 6 in 2004 was higher than my MTO2 pay I don’t get pay protection. However the increments at MTO3 which I have received over the last number of years are bigger than AFC increments so salaries state that I will lose £54 per month starting this month. I appreciate that I have come out a lot better than some other outcomes but losing £54 is a bit of a sickner.

This reminds me of that old ad, "somewhere someones pulling your pilsner!"

Right if you had logged a greavance before agenda for change had even been heard of and was sucessfull, your subsequent rebanding would be back dated to the date you filled the greavance. Since your salaries department had placed you on band 6 late in 2004 and you have subsequently been banded to band 6 which should be backdated to Oct 2004 you should be on the right salary. The same uplifts were applied to the Whitley grades as AFC grades so there shouldn't be any difference.

1) As Chris says, because you had a whitley grading appeal in place before AFC the outcome of this appeal must be backdated to the date it was filed. Therefore in October 2004 it should be the mto3 band that is used to move across to band 6. This still won't result in pay protection but may shift you up an increment or so.

2)From the Q&A of the NHS employers website

"Do staff continue to receive pay increments on their Whitley basic pay past 1 October and 1 December 2004 and until they are assimilated to Agenda for Change pay?

Section 46, paragraph 9
Yes - and the basic pay on the effective assimilation date is to be calculated as in paragraph 46.9."

Section 46 paragraph 9 is :-

"An employee’s current pay for the purpose of assimilation to the new pay spines and bands, referred to below as “basic pay before assimilation”, is their annual full-time equivalent basic pay on the effective assimilation date plus the annual value of any job evaluation related allowances (see Annex Q) plus the average value of any bonus payments under schemes which are discontinued (see paragraph 46.42 below)."

Now here is where it gets confusing: the "effective date" in the handbook is stated as being October 2004 BUT both the handbook and the Q&A infer that the "effective date" is the "actual" assimilation date and any increments earned on whitley should be taken into account. The Clincher on this argument is section 46 paragraph 20:-

"The level of pay before assimilation for the purpose of this calculation will be the average level of the payments in the left-hand column of Table 7 above over a reference period of twelve weeks or three months ending at the assimilation date except:
- where this period includes the annual pay award due in April 2005 or an annual increment, the protected amount should be adjusted as if that award or increment had applied throughout the reference period;"

Which shows that the assimilation date is NOT October 2004 but the ACTUAL date since it refers to 12 weeks including April 2005 (my handbook was written in January 2005 and expected afc assimilation to be finished by end of 2005 )

Now if you take this paragraph to the extreme you can argue that your current MTO3 increment must be used to work out your pay band in October 2004 and then work on from there

3) For protection purposes the date referred to is "assimilation date" NOT the "effective assimilation date" so I would argue strongly that protection starts at the date you are actually assimilated i.e. NOW and therefore if all the above fail you should still be on protected pay until October.

If you're in a Union make them earn their dues (ps if it's one of the 7 that accepted the pay deal after getting an overwhelming No vote from their members ask them WHY?)

A quick p.s. to my previous post

Since you had the mto2 to mto3 appeal going which you won, not only should your MTO3 pay be backdated to the appeal start date and used for assimilation to AFC, but, you will also get a nice new incremental date of the anniversary of the appeal date. Since that is when you left the top of MTO2 and started getting increments again.

E.G. If by some chance you lodged the appeal on 2/10/03 that would mean that you assimilate on the 1/10/04 and go up an increment on the 2nd

Lo and Behold there is a God.
Contacted my salaries dept this am and they have now admitted that they have "made a mistake" and in fact had started me on the wrong increment and had not noticed my upgrade to MTO3 in 2004. To late to do anything about the £54 coming out this month but I should get it back next month along with any back pay

Well done Kaiser!
Some of our guys were given erroneous AFC deals which took months to sort out. I would urge every one out there to check their AFC letters and make sure that you are not losing out. I think we also need to encourage any MTO3's who were given band 5 to challenge their banding, it is obvious that MTO3 equates to band 6.

Obvious to quite a few it might seem that MTO3 equates to band 6 but unfortunately not to those that count, it seems it depends on which profile was used. Personannly I would make the medical technician profile the only usable profile for our jobs, since it's clear that someone's just renamed the Biomedical scientist profile and then called it generic!

Excuse my ignorance but why should the Medical Technician profile be used? Is it not more beneficial to be matched onto the healthcare scientist profile as you require less points to get onto the band 6?

You'd think so wouldn't you, but it doesn't seem to work like that, you can't just add up points and say someone should be on a certain band because their job has so many points and a profile has so many minimum. There's a whole book written on matching with all the rules and regulations and quite a lot of memorandums you only get to see when you put in an appeal.