Redundancy deal for largest council

Unions at Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Britain, have signed a new redundancy agreement covering both voluntary and compulsory redundancies.

The agreement includes criteria for redundancy selection based on performance ratings, experience, skills and disciplinary and absence records. A weighting is given for continuous local government service.

The agreement involves four unions, UNISON, GMB, UCATT and Unite. However, the latter three have also agreed additional policies around ring-fencing and an assimilation protocol to which UNISON is not a party. These three unions form the Birmingham Trade Union Consortium which has welcomed the new agreement saying: “Whilst we would prefer to be in a situation where this would not be necessary we have to recognise, regrettably, the realities of the current economic climate.”

The majority union in the council is UNISON which has around 12,000 members working for the authority. Joint branch secretary Graeme Horn told Fact Service that they had signed the deal with great reluctance. It only improves on the statutory minimum in that the weekly pay is actual pay without the statutory cap. However, the formula for number of weeks’ pay is the statutory one, and most of the Unison members are in the lower grades. Unison, unlike the other three unions, has not agreed to the redundancy selection criteria or the new assimilation process document.