Nursery nurses in Scotland have gone on strike after working for 15 years without a proper pay review. Five thousand nursery nurse members of the public services union Unison voted in favour of strike action and an indefinite boycott of duties not recognised in current pay levels. The five-week programme of industrial action started on 20 May. Strikes are taking place at different times in four regions of Scotland and are due to culminate in a Scotland-wide day of action.
Nursery nurses in Scotland at the top of the pay scale are paid 13,800 a year by local authorities, but salaries start at just 10,000 even though most are trained. Unison is demanding a 4,000 a year pay increase - a top rate of 18,000 a year and a starting salary of 14,000, based on a 35-hour week, 52 weeks a year.
'The claim for a rise of 4,000 works out at less than 300 per year which is not a great deal of money had the pay been reviewed properly every year,' says Carol Ball, chair of Unison's nursery nurse working party.
In the past 15 years nursery nurses have received only inflation-based pay rises negotiated each year by the Scottish Joint Council, the national negotiating body for local authorities.
Nursery nurses' frustration with their pay has increased in recent years as they have been expected to take on ever more duties. Meanwhile, there have been severe delays in implementing the Single Status Agreement, under which local authorities were expected to re-evaluate all workers' roles and responsibilities and put them together on one pay spine -- an exercise that should have been completed by April last year.
The Single Status Agreement remains a contentious issue south of the border with only 14 of England's 400 local authorities undertaking the re-evaluation, which has not guaranteed nursery nurses a fair assessment of their new responsibilities.
Additional duties added to nursery nurse jobs without commensurate pay include planning, observation and assessment and student training.
'This boycott of all duties added to the job description - such as grace and favour duties including not cleaning toilets after a morning session has had quite an impact in certain areas,' says Ms Ball. 'Some nurseries in Glasgow have had to close for the afternoon session because the toilets do not meet the Care Standards.
'Boycotting duties will not affect children in terms of the learning experience they receive because that will still happen. But it will affect the nursery passing on information to the education authority and Scottish Executive. We will continue the boycott until we get a claim and currently have approval from the industrial action committee for a five-week strike. As the action continues we are trying to give parents as much information as possible about what is happening. We are limiting the strikes to spread across the country to try and contain disruption.'
Pay and grading
Unison's Scottish Local Government Service Group established a Nursery Nurses Working Group to look at the pay and grading of nursery nurses in Scotland in 1999. The Working Group consulted with Unison branches and nursery nurses employed in education and social work in Scottish councils. A pay and grading claim was produced in September 2001 and formally lodged with the local authorities at the Scottish Joint Council Annual Meeting in October that year. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), however, rejected the national claim on the grounds that, under the Single Status Agreement, job evaluation was a matter for individual authorities. However, Unison believes that nursery nurses should be paid on national grades because their remit is determined by national policies.
'As a profession we all train to a certain level. The claim is based on nursery nurses who have reached NNEB, HNC or SNVQ Level 3 early years education and childcare,' says Ms Ball. 'We do not want better-off authorities paying their staff more to do the same job as elsewhere. COSLA says the councils want local flexibility to say what range of tasks nursery nurses do but we say they cannot deliver the correct services unless they do all the duties they are undertaking at the moment.'
The union then resubmitted the claim to each local authority, and a joint working group was set up in November. But Unison walked away as it felt the employers were using the working party as a 'stalling tactic'.
Ms Ball describes COSLA's proposal to create a benchmarking post, subject it to a job evaluation and recommend an outcome to authorities as 'lacking guarantees and totally unacceptable. We need to have the job upgraded now and then an evaluation done on the basis of the regraded range of duties.'
COSLA says the strike could have been avoided if Unison had continued to negotiate with local authorities on the basis of the pay and grading claim that is being dealt with by the Nursery Nurses Working Party. COSLA spokesman Councillor Frank Russell says, 'The employers' side have tabled fair and sensible proposals which would allow nursery nurse jobs to be evaluated using the agreed national framework. We need to get back to the negotiating table to pursue responsible implementation of the agreed procedure for regrading claims.'
Talks are now being resumed this week (Tuesday 3 June) with COSLA and Unison agreeing to meet. Councillor Russell says, 'We hope to make progress with the regrading claim. We have a proposal on the table and to date have not heard back from the trade union on that so we hope to discuss it on Tuesday.'
Fife's closer to victory
Fife nursery nurses are a step closer to victory than their colleagues nationally as discussions are also being held in Fife between the council and the local branch of Unison aimed at resolving the dispute. The discussions follow a one-day strike which forced 82 Fife council nurseries to close.
Fife Council's senior education manager Ken Greer says, 'We're continuing to monitor the national negotiations through COSLA on this dispute but have committed to continuing local discussions in the hope of reaching a resolution.
Meanwhile, Unison has agreed that while local negotiations continue they will not extend strike action in Fife. It is still early days in our negotiations, but we believe it is a truly positive start. In the coming meetings we'll be discussing issues such as duties and pay and grading for nursery nurses.'
Ms Ball believes that Stirling is in a similar position to Fife but there are no meeting dates as yet. 'Any individual local authority is at full liberty to discuss the claim and settle and we hope this will have a rolling-stone effect.
But there has to be a serious engagement on a claim, not protracted talks which can suspend action. Nursery nurses are not against progress. It is a good thing. We just want recognition for doing it.'
