Tree Gang Pt. 49: Malcolm gets one over council bosses

“YOU can’t do this and still be a team leader,” smiled Alan Chesterfield, Malcolm’s boss, or ‘the smiling assassin’, as he was known to the men under him for his penchant for delivering bad news with a cheerful grin.

Malcolm smiled back. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that myself, but I will ask the convenor to check it out and let you know.”

Russell Barrett, union convenor for the parks department, was Malcolm’s second boss now he was a union rep. Malcolm had a nagging feeling that having a foot in both camps might make things at work a tad complicated. 

READ MORE: Tree Gang Pt. 48: Malcolm becomes a union representative

“Don’t worry. Just bat him back to me,” said Russell, when Malcolm raised the issue.

A day later Alan reluctantly conceded that Malcolm could be a union rep and a team leader, as long as it didn’t interfere with his work. An empty threat, as Russell Barrett had him over a barrel. However, Malcolm himself was keen not to let his new role take him away from the tree work he enjoyed. He wasn’t driven by any burning desire to be a union rep but recent events had forced him into it. 

The council was going through massive changes in jobs, terms and conditions and, most importantly, pay. The expressed aim of Single Status was to streamline the council’s plethora of differing grades and make them consistent across the departments. All in the name of fairness and equality. However, as things stood, in six months’ time Malcolm’s grade would drop and so too would his wages by £1,000 a year. Single Status seemed to be more about levelling down than levelling up. 

In this frantic race to the bottom, all the grounds staff were facing a drop in pay.

Naturally, the fairness and equality of it escaped them, as several tumultuous and angry meetings across Hanbridge soon proved.

“What about the bin workers? What about the litter pickers?” rose the cry at each meeting across the parks dept. 

If Malcolm had learned one thing from his union rep courses, it was that the strength of a union lay with the people in it. However, solidarity wasn’t likely as long as members kept pointing the finger at colleagues who seemed to be getting a better deal. It was all very depressing.

Nevertheless Malcolm metaphorically rolled up his sleeves and set to the task in hand, namely, keeping his own and everyone else’s wages at the level to which they had become accustomed.

The first thing he had to do was log an appeal and ask for a re-appraisal of their jobs. In response he received a “gauge job overview” that listed all the criteria used to give the new grades. The problem was nobody, including Malcolm, knew how such criteria were arrived at or judged.

At first glance it seemed straightforward. The overview came with a ‘question trace’ that asked various questions relating to the conducting of Malcolm’s work. Such as 1301: ‘Does the job holder have to work outdoors?’ Answer: ‘The job holder regularly works outdoors.’ 1201: ‘Is the job holder responsible for tools and equipment some of which is expensive?’ Check. 1101: ‘Does the job involve responsibility for limited financial resources?’ Check. Responsibility for people? Check. Responsibility to the public? Check, and so on right down to emotional demands. However, the question remained: how did all this relate to the grade he’d been given?

Malcolm asked Russell: “How are these questions marked?”

“Oh, they allocate points depending on the answers,” said Russell.

“Yes, but how do they come up with the points?”

“It depends on what you say to the questions. Just put everything down and management will give it a grade.”

Malcolm felt he was going around in circles. “I understand that but evidently some answers garner more points than others. I just want to know how it works. I assume there’s some kind of checklist?”

“You would have to ask HR.”  

So much for union power, thought Malcolm.

Malcolm asked HR and was predictably given the runaround. They told him to see the director, the director told him to ask his boss, Alan, who told him to go back to HR, thus completing the circle. Malcolm knew from previous experience that how you worded things made a huge difference. Without knowing how grades had been arrived at it was going to be an uphill task to contest them. He needed to understand the management speak being used.

As the days dragged on and the appeal interviews grew rapidly closer, Malcolm was still fumbling his way blindly.

Serendipitously he happened to mention the problem to his former colleague Giles Winsor, who was now running the grounds service for another council further north.

“Best of luck, Malc. We’ve just been through this ourselves,” he said. “A right bloody pain it was too.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of the gauge point criteria would you?” he asked, casually.

Giles replied: “Sure, I’ll email you a copy.” 

A few days later Malcolm was pleased to receive a stack of documents from Giles.

Different levels were ascribed to each task (1–6 or 1–10 depending) and each level carried a certain number of points. For instance, a level 1 task might only have 12 points while a level 4 task could get you 40. In the knowledge question a level 1 statement could be: “The job requires procedural knowledge for a limited number of tasks, the job holder needs to be able to follow oral and written instruction.” Whereas level 5 might be:

“The job requires theoretical, practical and procedural knowledge in a specialist area or equivalent,” and got you a lot more points.

This was just what Malcolm needed. On the gauge evaluation for his team leader job his knowledge had been given at level 3. ‘Job requires knowledge of relatively complex procedures for the operation of associated tools and equipment.’ By adding in the specialist nature of his arboricultural skills and associated qualifications his rating leapt from 3 to 5 giving him an extra 40 points.

The same followed for more criteria. Initiative and independence jumped from 2 to 4 once Malcolm understood that 4 involved making decisions on the fly and dealing with unexpected problems. Management clearly thought being called out to a rotten tree hanging over a house in a gale was the same as weeding a shrubbery. Responsibility for supervision and the general public jumped two places and gained an extra 25 points, once the danger from falling branches and felling trees was factored in.

By the time interview day arrived Malcolm’s diligence in going through the data with a fine-tooth comb had lifted him from 400 points to 483, enough to keep him at the grade he currently occupied. The interview took place in a small office at Joiner Road depot.

There was Malcolm, Russell Barrett and two other team leaders on the gardening side. A HR representative, a Single Status consultant and the deputy director were also present.

Malcolm waited patiently while management explained to the consultant how they had measured the grades, emphasising their thorough and careful assessment. The two gardening team leaders offered up ordering plants and implementing bedding schemes as examples of their independent work. Alas it didn’t do anything to change the levels given as a lot of the more complex bedding had already been outsourced or done away with.

Finally, the time came for Malcolm to make his case. Reaching into his bag, he drew out a pile of notes and proceeded to give a full breakdown of the argument for keeping his grade. He talked of the use of chainsaws, the importance of tree surveys, traffic management, rope work, use of chemicals and all the safety and certification required for the job of tree surgeon. More importantly, he linked every single one to a given level in the evaluation document.

The assistant director frowned. “Who gave you all that information? It’s not for general distribution.” He reached for the pile of documents but Malcolm moved them away.

“I found it on the internet,” said Malcolm with a straight face.

The HR representative said: “Oh! Then it’s not a Hanbridge Council-approved document.”

“Maybe not,” said Malcolm. “But from what I can see it still matches the criteria being used. And surely the issue is not what papers I have in my possession but whether my revised, and I might say accurate, question trace reflects the standing of my current grade?”

“Malcolm’s right,” said Russell. “We are here to appraise the job not the authentic nature of the paperwork. All that matters is the points the question trace gives him.”

There was a lot of grumbling but the management had to agree. Malcolm had done his homework well.

In the end they conceded that he could keep the grade 6 he was currently on. It was a double victory too, for as there was no division between team leaders it meant the gardening team leaders also kept their grade. Though they were a little dubious when it was pointed out that in order to validate their current grade structure they would have to go on arboriculture courses and be willing to step up to tree gang work if Malcolm was ever off sick.

The victory didn’t end there. A few weeks later, Malcolm was sat in a similar meeting representing his own team going through their assessment. As before, he went through their question trace point by point. At the end of the interview he had not only saved their grade, but also won them a higher evaluation. As the team leader had to be at least a grade above the team under them, Malcolm’s grade went up again.

For several days the director could be seen looking very sombre in the company of the head of finances. Malcolm’s string of victories did not bode well for their cost-cutting drive. Eventually a decision was made  to separate the tree gang once more from the general grounds staff. The streamlining of services ditched in favour of a less expensive two-tier system of generalists and specialists. Tree work and weedkilling were given their own specialist teams allowing management to drop the grades on the general gardening staff. Though once again Malcolm worked hard to enable them to keep their current grade.It had long been a common complaint on the council that the union did nothing for its members. Malcolm was pleased that at least in this instance he had managed to disprove that.