so, personal assistants in edinburgh finally get a pay rise. is a 24 pence hourly rate rise all they can come up with after nearly two years of consultation. this miserable amount is a real slap in the face after all the hard work. it is more insulting only back dating till march 1st 2002.

can they really get away at saying pa's are only worth 5.38, i think not. this level of pay is still totally unacceptable.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2002

Answers

Hi Mark,

The Edinburgh pay increase does not reflect the work of PAs. This is however not connected to the ongoing ( yep nearly 2 years now) job evaluation of the PA role. My understanding is as of last week that further information had come back to Social Work from the Human resources section of the council with reccomendations. This needs to be considered by Social Work senior management. I will as I hope others do press senior social work managers in every meeting with them.

However it will hopefully happen soon and the pay of individual PAs will reflect the tasks they carry out.

Unfortunately there is increasing disparity of pay rates between employers as some people are able (and forced by the lack of PAs) to pay higher rates further disadvantaging those on lower rates.

There are several other potential sources of funding for employing PAs including health board monies and possibly also transistional housing benefit.

Do we want to meet about all of this make some joint representations etc?

What do people think?

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2002

Mark

At last the people in the sticks have overtaken the city dwellers.

Midlothian have increased the PA pay rate from £4.72 to £5.55 as from 1st April this year. On top of this the PAs are receiving a backdated rise from October 2001 to April 2002 from the £4.72 to £5.30 (one of my PAs should receive approximately £700 back pay).

Clearly something has to be done with all the anomalies we are coming across.

It would be interesting to see how each of the regions have evaluated their pay rates, particularly Edinburgh after such a long consultation period.

Jeff

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002