Some CWU Members in Santander to see 21% Pay Rise

Telecoms & Financial Services February 4 2016

CWUis strongly recommending a wide-ranging draft agreement with Santander that, if approved by members, will take pay off the union’s negotiating agenda until 2019.
After a marathon set of lock-down talks, the complex deal finally fulfils a long-standing CWU ambition to secure a transparent pay progression mechanism for the vast majority of CWU-represented grades at the bank.

The new pay progression arrangements boost average overall rises to more than 4% for those paid below the salary range mid-point in 2016.
Add in the impact of the union’s success in persuading Santander to become a Living Wage Employer in 2014 and the overall effect will be to increase overall base pay for some of those brought into pay progression arrangements for the first time by an astounding 21% in 2016.

Meanwhile, minimum base salaries in the call centres and the branch network will rise from £14,287 to £15,330.
The biggest winners will be those who’ve been sitting at the bottom of the pay range of those grades.

Assistant secretary John East says: “Up until now, if you didn’t work in a call centre or a high street there was no automatic way you could progress towards what Santander regards as the mid-point or market rate’ of your grade.

“Essentially, it was down to the whim of your manager as to whether he or she felt they needed to offer you more to retain your services or to reward you for what you’d done – and obviously that was a system that didn’t always result in fair outcomes.
“That’s why the CWU was adamant that, in parallel with these pay negotiations, we wanted the company to finally fulfil pledges it made as part of the 2012 pay settlement to extend such a system to all but senior managers – which is precisely what we’ve achieved.”

Highlights of the deal

Members across Santander are about to recievea detailed explanation of the deal.
Highlights, however, include not just the extension of pay progression arrangements but an important improvement on how the entire system operates – and also a radical departure from the Bank’s traditional linkage of base pay awards with performance.

Pay progression: The mechanism that is now proposed for virtually all CWU-represented grades at Santander is unique within the high street banks and very much the result of concerted lobbying by the CWU over many years.
As part of the company’s agreement to extend automatic annual pay progression to the vast majority of CWU members that were previously excluded, the company, also agreed that those benefiting for the first time would receive their first pay progression payments in 2016 rather than in 2017 as originally proposed.
The CWU has also persuaded Santander stop penalising those who receive a below satisfactory’ rating in one of their first three years by adding an extra two years to the time it takes to get to the maximum of their grade.

Performance: Also unique in the banking sector is Santander’s agreement to CWU demands that, for the duration of thethree-year deal, any linkage of individuals’ base pay awards to performance will be suspended.

John concludes: “While there’s always an element of risk in multi-year deals, that risk has been mitigated by a clause that re-opens negotiations should inflation rise above 3.5% in either the second or third year, with an understanding that, if that situation arises, management will have to come forward with more money.

“Significantly, there is no separate trigger for management to renegotiate the deal if inflation goes through the floor or even negative – and with economists now talking about the real possibility of a worldwide depression, and a bear market already taking hold, that has to be a real possibility.
“The 2016 element of the deal already significantly outstrips RPI inflation and, weighing up all the present indicators, the CWU negotiating team believes there is a strong likelihood of the same occurring in 2017 and 2018. It’s a calculated risk, but one we believe is well worth taking.”

Ballot:Voting starts on Monday 8 February all CWU members employed by Santander UK will receive ballot papers and be asked to decide on a three year pay offer.

Those members who are in Bootle Financial Services Branch will attend meetings on the Bootle site between Monday 8th and Thursday 11th February at which they will be given a ballot paper to place in a ballot box.Voting willclose on Monday 22nd February