To consider any requests received in accordance with Part 4, Section B, paragraph 29 of the Council’s constitution.
Minutes:
The Chair advised that a request had been received from Chris Taylor on behalf of the Trade Unions to address the Committee in relation to agenda item 6 – Haringey Academy’.
The Chair agreed to receive the deputation and advised that the address would be for no more than 3 minutes.
Mr Taylor addressed the meeting and stated the following points:
· The Unions welcomed the proposals, particularly the apprenticeship programme and the commitment to provide opportunities for young people leaving care and/or who were not in education, employment or training. But the intake from these groups would require to be monitored to ensure that opportunities were actually being offered to them.
· The main issue of concern was that the Council would not pay apprentices the London Living Wage in the first year, when in fact it paid the living wage to all directly employed staff, and therefore apprentices should be no exception.
· The reason for not paying was that paying only the minimum wage would allow 8 more apprentices to be taken on per year, but the argument that paying less than a living wage, pay poverty wages, so that more staff could be taken on was a spurious and dangerous one, and not an argument that the Unions expected a Labour council to be making. For an apprentice , the cost of living was still the same as for any other worker, and the wage should reflect this.
· With reference to paragraph 6.7 of the report, the proposal on pay was positively benchmarked against other neighbouring boroughs, but paragraph 6.6 stated that Islington Council paid the living wage to apprentices, so if Islington could pay t, why should Haringey not. The paragraph also stated that providers had reported that the higher the salary then the better the response and the calibre of applicants – and this would appear to be a very good argument for paying the living wage.
· In the Unions view the amount of money being used was a pittance and that the Unions believed that the council could easily afford to pay the living wage and take on 8 more apprentices. This was the council that was currently spending £20,000 a day on consultants and interims. A tiny proportion of this could be spent on providing opportunities for people who will be the organisation’s future.
· The report stated that paying the living wage to apprentices would cause tension with existing employees who were fully trained to fulfil their roles. This was a somewhat grim and negative view of staff, which there was no evidence to support. In the past, some people would have argued that there should not be equal pay for women because it would make men angry. A small number of people may think like that , but this should not be pandered to, and apprentices would only be paid 80% of the weekly living wage as they would be at college for one day a week, so pay differentials should not be an issue. Employees in some areas where there were apprentices would be paid above the living wage anyway, so it would not be an issue there. For those employees that were on the living wage only, consideration could be given to an uplift in their pay to maintain a differential.
· That it was noted that the interns would be paid at scale 4, and were likely to be graduates from more affluent backgrounds, probably more likely to be white. The Unions felt that it was wrong that interns should be paid a living wage while apprentices, who will be more likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds and marginalised groups, would be paid poverty wages, and that it was rather disappointing to see people on well over £100,000 a year arguing for others to be paid poverty wages.
· Finally, in terms of appendix 1 of the report the Unions queried why it was deemed to be preferable for apprentices to have GCSE Maths and English, particularly if the aim was to provide access to people who were from marginalised groups such as those leaving care, who may not have had full access to educational opportunities. In line with council recruitment, if qualifications were not essential to the job, which they obviously were not as they were merely preferable, then they should not be mentioned at all.
There being no points of clarification from the Committee the Chair thanked Mr Taylor for his address.
NOTED