The Department for Education has proposed making changes to the school staff roles whose pay and conditions will be covered by the new School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB).
In a consultation on the SSSNB, the department is proposing to use secondary legislation to both exclude and include certain staff from the new body’s pay process.
Currently, the Employment Rights Bill’s broad definition of support staff covers executive leaders of academy trusts, the DfE said, as well as other staff whose pay and or conditions are dealt with through other pay or negotiating bodies.
The secondary legislation would change the definition of academy trust senior leaders under the Employment Rights Bill to clarify that they are executive leaders.
The DfE is also proposing to use the secondary legislation to ensure that academy trust employees who do not work at a school - for example, admin or HR staff who may work in the trust’s central office - are included in the SSSNB.
Pay negotiations for school support staff
The department is asking for views on its proposals from support staff, anyone who employs support staff, unions, agency workers and agencies in a consultation running from 11 June until 18 July.
It is expected that support staff currently covered by pay arrangements under the National Joint Council (NJC) will move on to the SSSNB, as well as some support staff not included in the NJC arrangements currently.
The DfE is also asking for evidence on how support staff pay and conditions are currently set, and what changes staff would like to see.
“No one should be paid less or have worse conditions because of the move to the SSSNB,” the consultation says.
“At the same time, employers will keep the flexibility to respond to local circumstances and offer staff contracts beyond the minimum agreements reached by the SSSNB.”
DfE considers including agency workers
Finally, the DfE is asking for views on the impact of bringing agency workers within the remit of the SSSNB. This would mean making changes to contracts for agency workers to give them entitlement to minimum pay and conditions for support staff, and also having a representative for agency workers on the negotiating body.
“We think it may only be realistic to include agency workers who have a contract with an agency and work only in school settings - like directly employed school support staff - in the SSSNB in future,” the DfE says.
If agency workers were brought into the SSSNB, this change would have to be made through different legislation at a later date rather than through the Employment Rights Bill, the DfE says.
Tes revealed before the last year’s general election that Labour was planning to restore the SSSNB if elected.
Union row
The changes it is now considering come amid a row over union representation of school support staff.
The GMB Union has criticised the NEU teaching union for “actively recruiting school support staff members such as teaching assistants, despite signing up to a TUC-brokered agreement to only recruit teaching staff”.
At the GMB annual congress in Brighton today, it voted to consider its affiliation with the TUC if “the body does not take seriously this flagrant breach of union agreements”.
Lisa Bangs, GMB public services senior organiser, said: “GMB takes seriously its representation of school support staff members and has successfully contributed to the re-establishment of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.
“It is wrong for NEU to be recruiting support staff when it cannot negotiate their pay and, as a teachers’ union, it cannot represent the issues and experiences of support staff.”
In response, NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: ”The NEU does not have bargaining rights at a national level, but because we have an organised presence - standing up for education and education workers in the majority of schools - a number of support staff have opted to join the NEU.
“So much so that we have tripled our support staff membership since the formation of the NEU, with the majority of these new members not having been previously members of any trade union.”
He said the union was extending the “hand of solidarity to GMB and all other unions in organising a low-paid, badly treated and predominately female section of the education workforce”.
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