Time to change the Green Book

One of the reasons why private sector jobs during this latest recession did not plummet at the rate they had done in the 1980s and early 1990s was because many employers and their staff reduced payroll costs to avoid lay-offs.
Apart from well-known examples of car manufacturers closing plants for three months, there were numerous cases of workforces taking reduced hours and benefits to cut their costs, but save their jobs.
Such initiatives are spreading to local government as the recession moves from the private to the public sector. Increasingly, council employers are unilaterally negotiating changes to terms and conditions such as sickness pay, car allowances and bonuses, to reduce costs, but avoid expensive and unsettling redundancies. Generally, staff understand the logic since, clearly, it is preferable to be in work but without some of the often-generous terms and conditions offered by local government than to be on the dole.
Of course, there is a political imperative, as it helps reduce redundancy and unemployment costs. And, undoubtedly, there is an element of employers not wasting a good crisis to address expensive working practices no longer sustainable in a recession.
So, it is logical for Local Government Employers to try and formalise the ad hoc revision of what is known as part two of the Green Book, by making it part of national pay negotiations. If it can conclude a deal with unions in which pay in some areas goes up, but overall costs reduce, then both sides benefit. Although the unions have regarded the Green Book as sacrosanct, the reality is that on the ground, it is already being torn up by councils acting unilaterally.
As Lord Hutton said about public sector pensions – there is no case for a race to the bottom. Council employers should not create terms and conditions which are worse than the private sector or are likely to make recruitment in the future difficult. But it is reasonable that as they seek to reduce their staff costs, they look at staff overheads and bring on flexible working, rather than reach automatically for the P45s.