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Former Council leader hits out at council
Date published: 02 February 2009
Former council leader Allen Brett has hit out at Rochdale Council over their handling of the pay and grading review. Mr Brett says the intention of the review was to improve efficiency, to make sure people were properly rewarded and to help the low paid, but instead the result has seen staff morale plummet.
Mr Brett asks if “the inmates have finally taken over the asylum?”!
The Lib Dem cabinet members have also come under fire from Mr Brett; he suggests they may intend to appoint themselves a “pool of secretaries for their new £100,000 office suite at new lower salaries.”
Rochdale Online understands that the Council has issued a rebuttal of this suggestion by Mr Brett but has only sent the rebuttal to the local paper for publication Wednesday. In line with the stated policy of the council communications manager, the council is acting like a PR agency - instead of the communications channel it should be - and council communications staff are, again, attempting to manipulate the media by giving advance news to one media organisation to publish before releasing this information to readers of other publications.
Comments
My understanding of the P and G review is that the Review is necessary because of government policy. But the precise details of who loses money and how much is up to the cabinet members to decide, after receiving the findings of the reviewers and hearing (ignoring?) the results of the consultation.
So the responsibility for taking £12 000 from some households during this recession lies solely with the members of the present cabinet and the councillors who keep them in power.
Never a true word spoken 'Chadders'. The Council and the press have actively misled the residents of Rochdale and I wonder what other misleading stats they have gotten away with in the past!! Tell the truth Rochdale Council, how many employees will have lost pay in many years to come, its more than what you claim!!
Mr Brett knows that the Pay & Grading Review was based on a Union agreement made to address equal pay essentially. For Local Authorities this is an all-party affair because the Government decreed that Councils could not take money from other areas which meant that for anyone who gained, it had to be at the expense of others who lost. To leave everything unadjusted was not permitted - it was certainly not at the whim of Councillors of any party to interfere with the due process of the Agreement.
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Maybe that's why the newspaper keeps quoting the Council's understated figures for the number of people suffering under the P&G proposals, rather than reporting the true numbers.
By chadders @ 02/02/2009 19:37:07