Fórsa members working in local authorities will commence a campaign of industrial action on 21st and 22nd June, in an ongoing dispute with the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) over their refusal to establish a job evaluation scheme.
The union formally served notice to the LGMA management yesterday evening (1st June), after members working in local authorities voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action, up to and including strike action.
Fórsa initially wrote to the LGMA on the 8th May 2023 formally advising management of the outcome of the ballot on job evaluation, but has yet to receive either a response or acknowledgement to that correspondence.
Fórsa’s Head of Local Government and Local Services Richy Carrothers said that the management’s refusal to negotiate or even conciliate using the state machinery for dispute resolution is "a clear breach of the current public service agreement aimed at ensuring industrial peace.”
“We have been left with no other option but to escalate our dispute, this action is a last resort. We have a strong mandate from our members, and this dispute isn’t going to go away by ignoring it, which is exactly what the LGMA has attempted to do,” he said.
Richy urged the LGMA to immediately return to due process under the auspices of the WRC.
“Fórsa representatives remain available for meaningful and solution-focused engagement, as has always been our position. A small window of opportunity exists right now to resolve the dispute by engaging in meaningful negotiations and to avoid escalation of this dispute, but that window is closing,” he stressed.
The union represents more than 10,000 local government and services workers including clerical, administrative, management, technical and professional staff.
Job evaluation, which has been established in the health and higher education sectors, is a process for measuring the relative worth of posts in an organisation based on the work a post-holder is doing or is expected to do.
Fórsa maintains that local authority workers continue to take responsibility for additional duties and responsibilities assigned to them during the economic crisis, when 10,000 jobs were lost from the sector.
Richy encouraged branches engage with non-members with a view to asking them to join the union as we move into this industrial action space.
“There is power in this union, and we must work together to organise workers around this issue in local authorities. No resolution can be achieved in this dispute unless there is an agreement with Fórsa on the introduction of an acceptable job evaluation scheme for local authority staff,” he said.
Branches will receive detailed information on the action shortly.
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