LCR22441

1. Assimilation Of Acting Up Platelayers To Mobile Ganger Payscale


BACKGROUND:

2. UNION'S ARGUMENTS:
The Trade Unions have an agreement that higher duty would be paid on acting up in mobile ganger positions. They are seeking a recommendation supporting equal assimilation on the pay scale for all platelayers acting up as mobile gangers in supervisory positions.



COMPANY'S ARGUMENTS:
The Company sees a clear distinction between acting-up as a full Mobile Ganger and acting-up to supervise contractors only. Staff acting up as Mobile Ganger for supervising contractors is done regularly but not on a continuous basis.

RECOMMENDATION :

The Court has given very careful consideration to the written and oral submissions of the parties.

The matter before the Court relates to the correct operation of a 2011 agreement where arrangements were put in place to remunerate platelayers who acted up to supervise contract staff.

It is a matter of concern to the Court that the parties dispute what has in fact happened in terms of remuneration of platelayers acting up to supervise contract staff since 2011. This dispute as regards a matter of fact has been presented to the Court notwithstanding that 55 platelayers are asserted to act up in this manner regularly.

The Court is also concerned that the parties are disagreed as regards the factual reality of the work expected of a platelayer acting up to supervise contract staff as against the work expected of a platelayer acting up to carry out the full range of Mobile Ganger duties.

Finally, no individual example has been given to the Court of a platelayer who has acted up to supervise contract staff since 2011 who has been paid anything other than the ‘one plus one’ arrangement asserted by the employer to have been agreed in 2011. The Union side has referred to individuals who have been assimilated onto the scale since 2011 but has not been prepared, for stated reasons, to share those details with the employer or the Court. The Court notes that one individual is asserted by the Union side to have been seeking assimilation since 2016 and believes that the employer was prepared to concede that to him or her at a certain point before deciding not to proceed with that concession.

Against a background of disputed facts and accounts of events, the Court cannot find a basis to recommend that the claim of the Union side should be conceded.

The Court does note that it is open to the parties at any time to engage so as to achieve agreement on the underlying facts of this matter both in terms of the factual history of remuneration of platelayers acting up to supervise contract staff since 2011 and the relative job content of a mobile ganger carrying out the full range of duties versus a platelayer acting up to supervise contract staff.

The Court so recommends.

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court
	Kevin Foley
SOC	______________________
9 Aug 2021	Chairman