The Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists has rejected a two-year pay offer which guarantees increases above inflation.
The Department of Health had offered hospital pharmacists a 3.52 per cent increase for 2000-01 coupled with an increase for 2001-02 of 0.5 per cent above the underlying rate of inflation at December, 2000.
In a statement on December 4, the guild's section general secretary (Mr Gerry Looker) said that the 2000 offer was less than that awarded to NHS staff covered by pay review bodies. He added that the 2001 offer would mean an increase below the prevailing retail price index and would thus represent a real terms pay cut. The Department had also proposed to break the established custom of linking any pay offer to an uplift in payments for emergency duty
cover.
Mr Ron Pate (chairman of the Pharmaceutical Whitey Council staff side) told The Journal on December 5 that the major sticking point had been the failure to increase emergency duty allowances in line with the the offered salary increase. This would be pursued vigorously and might be raised in Parliament (Mr Pate noted that the latest negotiating meeting had only been granted after written complaints to Ministers about the management side's refusal to meet the staff side). He added that if the management side did not shift its position on emergency duty allowances guild members would be balloted on the offer with a recommendation that it should be rejected.
Commenting on a three-year pay deal that the Government was supposed to have struck with NHS workers last year and on which the two-year offer had been based, Mr Pate said that it was the guild's view that this did not apply to hospital pharmacists. This was because they had settled their pay for 1999-2000, which would have been the first year of the three-year deal, before the three-year deal had been offered.
| Correction The offer rejected by the guild was of a 3.25 per cent increase, not 3.52 per ecnt. |