Benchmarking report urges pay rise for lower-paid grades in banking

A special pay benchmarking report covering the Central Bank of Ireland and the state-run Financial Services Authority has recommended pay increases of up to 20% for lower-paid grades, and only minimal rises for higher grades. Some 700 staff employees working in the administrative, clerical and professional grades were not awarded any increase. The benchmarking exercise is the second such initiative to be undertaken by the Central Bank body.

Benchmarking exercise

A three-person benchmarking body, chaired by the Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), Kieran Mulvey, compared the pay of the 1,000 staff members working at the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland (FSAI) with that of similar staff working in the private sector.

The combined Central Bank/FSAI (CBFSAI) Benchmarking Body operates along similar lines to the wider Public Service Benchmarking Body (PSBB), which covers the vast majority of public servants. In its report, issued in January 2008, the PSBB did not recommend any increases for the majority of public servants.

The CBFSAI report is the second such exercise to be undertaken by this benchmarking body, and the first to include all of the grades working for both organisations. Its previous report, published in 2002, covered only clerical, administrative and professional staff. Technical and general staff protested that they had been excluded; on this occasion, however, they were included.

Methodology

The methodology used in this exercise was similar to that used by the PSBB. Written and oral submissions were made by both sides, and a job evaluation exercise was undertaken to benchmark with the private sector.

The consultants carrying out the job evaluation exercise, Mercer, looked at 141 jobs across the organisations involved, with 141 employees completing questionnaires.

Increases granted

The increases granted by the CBFSAI Benchmarking Body are as follows:

• a 20% increase for cleaning staff (19 persons in total);

• a 10% rise for catering staff (27 workers in total);

• a 9% increase for senior supervisory staff (four persons in total);

• a rise of 7% for security, currency assistants, porters, maintenance staff, engineering staff, mint staff, print staff and note processing staff (195 workers in total);

• a 1.5% increase for Bank Professional 1/Scale H staff (32 persons in total).

Altogether, some 700 employees working in the administrative, clerical and professional grades, apart from the 32 Bank Professional 1/Scale H staff, were not awarded any increase. The report outlined that the increases granted to these grades in the first benchmarking exercise in 2002 – ranging between 11% and 13% – were higher than those awarded to comparable grades in the civil service under the first PSBB report of that same year.

Therefore, according to the CBFSAI Benchmarking Body:

The overall outcome of this process has given these grades a beneficial value above comparable civil service grades and scales. The net effect of this is that these scales compared favourably with equivalent private sector employments when the totality of the remuneration benefits are compared and taken into account.

Verifiable change

However, 75% of the pay increases for the technical and general grades are conditional on cooperation with various change measures. These will be subject to independent verification, which will be conducted by the Remuneration and Budget Sub-Committee of the CBFSAI, or by an agreed independent alternative. The measures include the following areas:

• change, flexibility and adaptability, including technological change;

• effective use of resources;

• internal and external customer service;

• stable industrial relations;

• effective performance management systems;

• recruitment practices;

• workplace partnership.

The CBFSAI Benchmarking Body indicated that its attention had been drawn to instances of ‘work inflexibilities and demarcation, including issues across the Technical and General groups of staff and particularly in the Currency Centre’. It recommended that both sides should meet ‘immediately on publication of this report’ and agree on these changes, which have been under discussion ‘for some time now’.

Pensions, tenure and annual leave

As was the case with the PSBB, the CBFSAI considered the value of pensions and security of tenure, reaching similar conclusions to those made in the main benchmarking exercise. Accordingly, 12% was discounted for the higher value of public service pensions, while nothing was deducted for security of tenure.

In relation to annual leave, the body noted that the industry standard, as identified by external assessment, was 22 days. Some CBFSAI workers did not receive this amount of leave; as a result, the body recommended that 22 days should become the minimum for all grades, although any grades already at this level or higher should remain at their current entitlement.

Trade union involvement

The main unions involved in this benchmarking exercise were as follows: Unite, representing all of the professional, administrative and clerical staff, as well as print staff, craftpersons, technicians and porters; the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), representing cleaning, catering, security, note processing and finishing staff, as well as currency assistants and maintenance and general assistants; and the Technical Electrical and Engineering Union (TEEU), representing electricians, technicians and technical supervisors.

Brian Sheehan, IRN Publishing