ALL GMB MEMBERS AT NOTTINGHAM CITY SCHOOLS - SINGLE STATUS TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Holiday Pay
Quite clearly all school staff are given no choice on when they can take their holidays and our members end up paying excessive rates as they have to go during peak times. Bearing in mind that their holiday’s do exceed those of other council workers the calculation for their pay quite clearly disadvantages school staff as it is reduced down with a calculator of 39 weeks divided by 52 making the hourly rate substantially lower than their other work colleagues within Nottingham City Council. The current proposals from the Council would worsen the terms and conditions of holidays on the basis that the Council would only want to pay only 44 weeks to 46 weeks depending on length of service. This quite clearly is not a position that the GMB and other trade unions can accept and to that end we are attempting to engage the Council over this issue. Quite clearly the potential for our members overall could be ultimately as much as 25% of their earnings being taken away from them and as a consequence would leave our members financially embarrassed as mortgages and their live styles are based around their current earnings. Even though there is the potential for an incentive payment to support the people who lose out, this position is still not entirely clear due to the issue of compromise agreements and the incentive payments not being clarified to a point where clarity of payments is understood by all.
I would also bring to your attention that a Trades Union Council lobby will be held at the Old Market Square, Nottingham on the 18th October at 4:00pm.
I believe that our members, wherever possible, should try and support this event to show their dissatisfaction and outrage over this situation. As caring people you opted for a career within schools to support children in their most vulnerable years of learning and the proposals that have been put forward totally disrespect you as individuals and collectively. The GMB along with the other trade unions will be fighting your corner over these issues, but at the time of writing this letter the agenda for change over these matters changes from hour to hour and I would ask that you bear with us if we don’t get the information to you as quickly as we should do, as this is sometimes due to the lack of communication between ourselves and the Authority.
I would finally ask that if members have any questions that they email them to myself at and I will try and post the most frequent questions asked with the answers on to the website, and also respond accordingly to the individual. If you require me to call you please provide a contact number where I can contact you directly and I will endeavour to respond to all enquiries personally.
I would just remind you that we have some 1.000 support staff within Nottingham City Council so this may take sometime in responding but my commitment will be to talk to every single individual.
To this end I have enclosed a sample of questions and answers that have so far been received and responded to.
Kind regards.
CHRIS NEEDHAM