CONSERVATIVE LEADER HITS BACK AT ‘UNLAWFUL’ PAY FREEZE CLAIM
WAGE LOSERS ARE ‘LOYAL, RANK-AND-FILE MEMBERS OF STAFF’
CLLR. JOHN BELL: “QUITE SIMPLY A CONTRACT SHOULD BE A CONTRACT”
Cllr. John Bell, the Leader of Tameside Conservatives, has hit back at Labour claims that Conservative proposals to freeze the salaries of some council staff, instead of allowing them to face pay cuts under the equal pay legislation, was ‘unlawful’.
Cllr. Bell said, “It is ‘unlawful’ because the Labour Government say so, having passed the equal pay legislation in 1997 as a sop to its union paymasters.
“The unions naively thought that equal pay meant increased pay for those at the lower end of the pay scale.
“Labour interpreted it as a ‘cost neutral’ exercise – for every winner there would be a loser who would have their wage slashed.
“Tameside Council call this process ‘harmonisation’.”
Cllr. Bell continued, “The losers are not those at the top end of the pay scale, but loyal, rank-and-file staff whose jobs don’t measure up well to the unequal parameters set out in the guidance cobbled together by Labour and their union comrades.
“Not a single member of staff had their arm twisted when they accepted jobs at Tameside Council. They signed contracts with a set salary – however high or low – that included benefits not always available in the private sector, such as a final salary pension, guaranteed holiday rights, and job security.
“Quite simply a contract should be a contract.
“However, this Labour Government has made that idea ‘unlawful’ and is now complicit with the unions in tearing up the contracts of between 16-33 per cent of staff, and sending them home with a pay cut and a threat to them to sign up by 9th November to secure their jobs.
“So-called socialist values torn apart in a socialist stitch-up.”
Cllr. Bell concluded, “It may be lawful to Labour, but it is certainly not moral.”
TAMESIDE CONSERVATIVES 