h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well the final part of this procedure will be played out on Monday - but to keep the interst going I've started another grievance about my manager favouring another staff member.

(if you've got the idea that I don't care about upsetting people anymore = you're right.)

During the course of our "little chat" he said that I had to recognise I couldn't win all the battles, and that I should "bend the knee a little."

Possibly my reply "Gee - if you'd been primeminister in 1940 we'd all be eating sauerkraut and speaking German now." wasn't what he was looking for.

Sounds like even if you're successful, you won't want to stay working there if you can avoid it.

Well got the letter about my grievence today - not upheld.

The other guy who complained was successful - seems his role was substanially increased, but mine wasn't.

Ah - so he was being paid more than me to do less then - no surprise there I guess.

Its what I expected, so I don't know why it depresses me so much.

Have a consolation

I may have mentioned that I'm caught up the NHS Agenda for Change, which is trying to bring everyone onto the same terms & conditions & allocating jobs to a common payscale & description scale.

In my department, those of us on a certain pay point have been allocated to a new band which most of us feel is under rated. The majority of us have submitted review forms - now we're told it will be 3 months before anything is done

Tough luck, McKay. Is there any chance of a move out of the company for pastures greener elsewhere?

Teasswill - Agenda for Change, nasty business all round. In the first versions of the document, they were looking at cutting my pay grade by about 40% because as a Finance Manager I don't have patient contact, and hence I'm not worth paying anything. Suffice to say that version changed PDQ!

CVs are out there - currently I'm putting all my resources into applying the rules - ALL the rules.

Yeah Agenda for Change is highly charged, and all non-medical staff below manager level are effectively being down-graded it seems.

Frankly, whilst I wish you luck with your review, I don't hold out any great hope, most of these grades are practically set in stone, and only very minor alterations will be made because budgets for the next 5 years have been built.

We don't expect to get any more money - the payscales overlap. Most of us are getting more take home pay because of increased London weighting, although my basic salary has gone down. That's their idea of protected pay & no reduction

What we're after is recognition of status. What has proved interesting is that we've each described a slightly different job. We are clinical staff, but they appear to be rating managerial duties as more important than hands on expertise.

Mckay - not easy making a change.

How's the job situation these days?

I just heard today that we were successful in our appeal to be upgraded - any related pay increase to be backdated to October 2004!

Recent events have put it on the back burner a bit, but I've applied for 3 jobs since Friday. Two are in Leeds, and the other is in Poole.

Legs crossed.