Pay and Grading update

[lnr]

I'm one of the lucky ones. My paperwork has just come through, including the diagrams showing roughly how the new grades match to the old grades. I've been mapped directly across from my old point partway up the COIII scale to the equivalent point partway up new grade 7. This gives me a slight payrise (the scheme was intended to be about 1.5% on average), which if you backdate it to January and take tax off will pay for my new bike and leave a bit over to go out to dinner and celebrate on, and is just in time to be paid in this month's pay packet on Thursday. And in September we'll be getting the normal annual cost-of-living increase, I think that's going to be 3%. That's normally in August so will be backdated by one month too. I'm not even going to do the maths, I'll just wait and see. Being partway up the grade means plenty of space for progression anyway, my colleague John as a COII is also mapped directly across to grade 7, but right at the top of it.

I know other people are still waiting, so *fingers crossed* they're not one of the unlucky ones whose new grade is lower than their old one. There's a guarantee to keep paying them at the current rate for four years, but there go four years of expected increases, and what if you're still "overpaid" at the end of that, do you take a cut at that point? Hopefully there won't be too many of them. But the marking scheme did make it hard for anyone who isn't managing people to come out much higher, so it's a bit worrying for more senior computing staff.

Comments

[imc.livejournal.com]

Backdated to January? That sounds nice. As far as I know, our new scales started on 1 August, as did the nationally agreed 3% increase. Won't find out for sure until next Wednesday, I guess.

Over here I believe they evaluated a select few representatives from each grade and then moved everyone over wholesale (i.e., everyone who used to be RS1B is now grade 6; everyone who was RS1A is now grade 7; the old RS2 is now grade 8, and so on). No one has been red-circled unless they were on a high superscale point, in which case they have four years to argue that their position should be regraded before they take a pay cut.

Since some of the old scales had ten points and none of the new ones has more than eight (except grade 10a, which I'm not sure I understand), people at the bottom of their respective scales have benefitted quite significantly from the changeover. People (such as me) at the top not so much, though it turns out my new scale point is 2% more than the old one. So I should now be 5% better off. No more scale progression for me, though, since I'm just finishing my 12th year here.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

Paragraph 3.4.5 of the notes we got with our letters makes it clear that people who are red-circled get all their expected increments for four years (rounded up to the next point on the new scale), and only after that get forcibly moved to their new grade. I can also report that at least some non-management computing staff around here have been assigned to Grade 8, which is only slightly lower than COI.

[lnr]

Yeah, I found that bit in the notes eventually. It's all quite complicated really, and I see there's also protection if your new point puts you nearer the top of your grade than your old one did, although that doesn't apply in my case.

I'm glad about your second point anyway. Opinion here seems to be that maybe being a lone CO in a dept just means less good support and advice on careful tailoring of the PD33 to hit all the right tickyboxes.

Interesting some of our senior COs who *are* management have been graded as if they were admin staff not techies, which was rather a surprise, but may well have been to their advantage.