Pay equality question

Philz0r

Philz0r

Philz0r

Associate
Joined
3 Apr 2011
Posts
1,912
Location
York
Hiya, just wondering if anyone has any information on this.

Basically I work for the council, our council pay bands have 3 tiers that progress pay every year till you're on top tier pay (3 years)

I'm currently on a lower paid job where my contract says I'm basically a grunt. I don't do anything special blah blah.

2 years ago I got offered a job, the job is spraying weeds using a quad bike.
The job is classed as skilled work and I require a driving license and chemical qualifications.

So we fought the company for the past 2 years to put us on a skilled paid band but they always refused. Last year they said they would give us the higher pay but their was some terms,
we would only ever get bottom tier pay of the higher band and only when we spray (with the weather we have there is always something that comes up so we can't spray, rain, heavy wind or a broken down vehicle).

This year they bought 3 more machines and are putting people who are currently on higher band and top tier doing this job full time.

They are brand new and just been trained.

I have asked work about this and they said "because they're already on higher band, they can do everything that falls under their band without problem".

The way I see it is, I'm gonna be on less money, doing same job as these other guys who this is now their main job too, not even going into I know the job and have done it for 2 years and this will be my 3rd year and no doubt it will probably fall on me to lead to new guys.

Do I have any legs to stand on or is this all above board?.

Cheers.
 
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Do you think the people originally hired on the higher band are pleased they are doing this work - no disrespect to what you do and my reasoning below

I'd say I'm pretty qualified at what I do buy have been asked at times to do work that frankly someone with very little experience would do - and that's OK in the short term for a bit of a change as they pay me at what my rate is. Long term though I wouldn't put up with it and if someone above me did my job I doubt they would do it long term if they were working at a high level previously
 
Funny you mention that,

No, non of them are happy doing it.

We even made the counter argument "if you force people to do something, will they be rubbish at it" and they didn't seem to care as long as it gets done. (No matter how bad)

But the 3 people doing it deffinatley arnt happy about it.
 
It's a great job and it's secure but the pay difference in the team is really bothering me.

I don't think that is worth throwing away a great job for. Well not at the minute anyways.
 
What actually is your job? You don't seem to have explained this properly. You said "doing same job as these other guys", but you also said you have been told you can't do that job, so what do you actually do?

IMO everyone should have an equal opportunity, but not necessarily equal results. e.g. You should have the same opportunity for higher pay as the others, but that doesn't mean you should get the same pay.

A lot of people think that XXXX does the same job as me, but gets paid more, therefore this is inequality, whereas actually either they do a different job (and therefore should be paid differently), or have a better skill set etc so can negotiate a better wage.

Also, maybe the issue isn't that you're not getting paid enough, it's that actually the other guys are being paid too much. Is there a high demand, but low supply for that other job? Maybe they have to pay more to actually get people into that position.
 
The job is the cleansing side:

Job is doing the weed spraying, so this involves mixing and working is herbicides, operating the sprayer vehicle as well as a few other bits n pieces.

When it's raining or too windy, we do other jobs like, tidying estates up, sweeping leaves etc.

The 3 new people are from a mobile crew designed to pick litter up and empty bins etc.

But they are being moved onto my team for at least this term. (So we will be doing exactly the same thing for 8ish months)

(March to november) after which they will return to their current job and I'll go do other jobs, basically whatever they can find me over the winter till spraying starts again.
 
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