Northumberland County Council is to Two-Tier its Workforce

A recent report issued to the press from Northumberland County Council regarding staff sickness hasn’t only highlighted the increase in ill health being suffered by the workforce in this a Council where bullying is rife and has been reported in the mainstream press on a number of occasions, but has opened the door on the thinking of Northumberland Conservatives in developing a two tier workforce to lower costs and develop an extra fear factor that people are waiting in the wings to take your job.

When speaking to the Northumberland Gazette this week, Kelly Angus  the head of HR  “said staff absence can also have an impact on the use of agency workers and overtime, which is another area of focus for the council’s HR team, with the total overtime costs for 2018-19 exceeding £7.5million”.

“Work is taking place on creating an internal staff bank which will offer employees the opportunity to register for work at any department/area within the council (dependent upon their skills and experience) and ‘this will ensure we have a more flexible workforce and reduce existing costs”.

Following changes recently announced to the Local Government Pension Scheme, (LGPS) a staff bank in the local government sense is not the same as a staff bank in the NHS which have been a feature of the health service for almost 50yrs. In the National Health Service, bank staff are members of the NHS pension scheme and accrue benefits each time they work in the flexible environment.

In Local Government the employers body has agreed that new employees and temporary employees can be excluded from the pension scheme. Hence over a period of time any staff bank in local government that is also used as a ‘detrimental to full time staff recruitment tool’ will severely alter the retirement income of Counties like Northumberland where employers pensions form the basis of the additional costs it takes to dwell in the Countryside where everything costs a whole lot more.

The Trade Unions who have experience of two tier workforce problems are challenging the changes but will be unable to halt the fear factor and bullying element of working for Northumberland County Council.