Summary of the editorial from IDS Pay Report 993, January 2008

What's giving rise to Scottish variations in pay bargaining outcomes?

Many, if not most, of our readers in Scotland will have enjoyed an extra day off over the recent holiday period, thanks to the additional bank holiday north of the border on 2 January. This was introduced in the early 1970s, after New Year’s Day became a bank holiday for the first time in England. This had long been the case in Scotland, and since Scots did not wish to lose their advantage in this regard, they were granted an additional holiday on the day after New Year’s Day.

However, longer holidays during some of the darkest days of the year are not the only apparent difference between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. In particular, a number of key pay negotiations over the past eight months or so seem to have taken a different turn in Scotland from that taken elsewhere. For example, Scottish teachers have just received an extra pay rise as compensation for inflation overtaking their pay award in 2007. By contrast, the School Teachers’ Review Body for England and Wales was prevented by the Government from revisiting the 2007 award, despite the inclusion of a specific inflation-triggered review mechanism in the deal. And the Scottish Government has paid the NHS and police awards in full from their due dates. In England, by contrast, these awards were staged or deferred, thereby reducing their annual values to the employees concerned.

What’s behind all this? Are employees in Scotland receiving preferential treatment? Certainly private sector pay in that part of the world is buoyant as well. Engineering workers at the Rosyth shipyard have just agreed a backdated pay deal giving them increases totalling 7.5 per cent for 2007. And the finance and oil sectors have been doing well too, pushing Scotland to fourth in the league table of average earnings for the major Government Office regions, just behind the East and South East.

... the full editorial can be read in IDS Pay Report 993