NIPSA to Recommend Equal Pay Offer to Civil Service Staff
NIPSA to Recommend Equal Pay Offer to Civil Service Staff
23/11/2009
After months of intensive negotiations Department of Finance and Personnel today forwarded proposals to NIPSA to settle thousands of equal pay claims in the NICS brought by the union
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Ministers approved the offer which has been reported to cost up to £150 million in back pay to 13,000 low paid civil servants as well increasing the annual Civil Service pay bill by up to £25m.
This afternoon NIPSA’s Civil Service Executive Committee decided to make a recommendation that union members should accept the proposals as a basis to settle the claims before the Industrial Tribunal.
NIPSA’s General Secretary John Corey confirmed that the union would be arranging to consult all the members in the grades and those who had submitted claims to the Industrial Tribunal.
Mr Corey said:-
“After years of pressing for equal pay failures in the Northern Ireland Civil Service to be addressed we welcome this offer as a significant step forward. We are pleased that the Executive Ministers recognised the validity of NIPSA’s longstanding claims for equal pay for thousands of hard working low paid civil servants who provide public services day and daily.
We will now be making arrangements to consult all the members in the grades covered by the offer and those who submitted the claims to the Tribunal. It will now be for those civil servants to decide whether or not the Department’s proposals are good enough to provide a basis to settle their equal pay claims before the Industrial Tribunal.”
The formal offer to the unions comes some 18 months after First Minister Peter Robinson promised to address the union’s long standing claims that there were serious pay inequalities affecting low paid civil service staff.
NOTE
See NIPSA Bulletin B/26/09 for details of offer.
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