Mary Evans reports
Nursery nurses in Nottinghamshire schools have achieved a groundbreaking pay deal providing them with a professional career structure and a salary banding which puts senior staff on a par with teachers.
The achievement by the Nottinghamshire branch of the UK's largest union, Unison, is encouraging nursery nurses around the country from London to Scotland to redouble their efforts to win better pay and status.
The package, due to be implemented in September, emerged after 18 months of negotiations between the union and Nottinghamshire County Council. It establishes three grades for nursery nurses based on a 32.5-hour week and 52-week pay year, with paid overtime at time and a half.
It is estimated that about 70 to 75 per cent of staff will be on Grade 2 at pay levels of 13,188 to 14,283 for unqualified staff, and Pounds 13,764 to 16,203 for their qualified colleagues. About 10 per cent of nursery nurses will be on Grade 3, which covers qualified, experienced staff with responsibility for management or supporting teaching assistant students, and sets pay between 15,741 and 18,417. The council and union are also looking at different options, such as day courses, for helping unqualified staff to achieve qualified status.
Unison's local branch organiser Mike Scott says, 'It is not only the pay rise that is important, it is the change in status. Our members are so pleased about that. For the first time there will be nursery nurses earning more than teachers in the same school. That is a dramatic change. The top of Grade 3 will overlap the teaching scale.'
The union concentrated the council's collective mind on reaching a deal by stressing that in the future it would have to reassess the role of nursery nurses under the job evaluation exercise that councils are required by the Government to complete as part of the single status programme. All councils have to evaluate every single job and put them in a ranking order.
Unison agreed with Nottinghamshire County Council that if they could jointly agree a satisfactory job grading for nursery nurses now, they would not go through the process again when the single status exercise is undertaken.
Mr Scott adds, 'We've got pretty much all we would have from a job evaluation exercise, but we have it now. We have lost nothing by negotiating it this way round.'
In theory, a school could opt out of the pay deal, but special schools have had money earmarked for the rises and Unison will expect other schools to use some of their new Government and council money to cover the rises.
The union will be closely monitoring the implementation of the package to ensure it is introduced by school governors. An appeal system is being established for nursery nurses who feel they have been downgraded.
'We made it clear that, if a local education authority refuses to go forward with this sort of deal, Unison would not hesitate in looking for a case to go to the employment tribunal under the equal pay legislation. We said to them, "You know if we do that we will win and it would be very embarrassing for a council that is always banging on about equal rights."' Unison's confidence is based on the legal precedent set by four nursery nurses in Gloucestershire, who successfully claimed against their employer in 1997 that they merited equal pay with a male comparator doing a different job from theirs.
Mr Scott says other branches have been in touch to obtain details of the package and negotiations. Members of Unison voted at their annual conference last week to launch a campaign urging the Government to provide more money for paying school support staff. And on the conference fringe, it was announced that local government employers and union are to set up a joint working party on school support staff.
Christina McAnea, Unison's national officer for education, says the moves are part of a renewed effort to gain recognition of the professional status of school support staff who for too long have been treated as second class citizens in the education system.
'Morale among school support staff has plummeted,' she says. 'We surveyed their pay as a proportion of teacher's pay and found that a nursery nurse who in 1995 was earning 51 per cent of a teacher's pay was by 2001 earning only 44 per cent of a teacher's pay. We also surveyed job satisfaction and found that 72 per cent of nursery nurses said they were unhappy with their level of pay.'
PANN professional officer Alison Johnston warns that sometimes when job evaluation exercises are conducted nursery staff are unaware of the process until they find themselves graded on the same band as colleagues with different qualifications. 'We urge our members to involve themselves in the process,' she says.
That has certainly been the case in Ealing, London, where council nursery staff staged a one-day strike this month after the council failed to ratify a regrading agreement which would have resulted in significant pay rises.
Brian Blake, Unison's social services convenor at Ealing council, says the local authority now seems to be more interested in resolving the dispute. 'There is a more positive attitude coming from them and we are more optimistic about some sort of settlement, but if there isn't, there will be further days of action,' he says.
Leaders of nursery nurses in Scotland are gearing up for industrial action in pursuit of their job evaluation claim. The nursery nurses argue that the across-the-board pay rise agreed for all public sector workers in Scotland this spring does not take account of the increased duties and responsibilities they now undertake.
Carol Ball, chair of the Unison nursery nurses working group, says, 'Our argument is that we have not had a job review since 1988, and since then we have carried the impact of a series of Government initiatives.'
The union is planning a twin-track strategy with a publicity campaign and petition to raise public sympathy. It is also considering industrial action if the claim is rejected. NW
Nottinghamshire pay scales for nursery nurses
Grade SCPs* Pay range
1 unqualified 8-13 10,554 - 12,390 1 qualified 11-17 11,817 -13,500 2 unqualified 16-19 13,188 - 14,283 2 qualified 18-23 13,764 - 16,203 3 qualified 22-27 15,741 - Pounds 18,417 *Spinal column points on pay scales
