LNER has now confirmed the pay increase due to staff covered by collective bargaining for the second year of our two-year pay agreement. The agreement covers 2019 and 2020 and will deliver a much welcome pay increase for members at this very difficult time. The detail is as follows:
- 2.5% increase to basic pay and associated allowances
- Minimum increase of £550 on base pay to boost the pay of lower paid staff
The increase will be paid in the 15 May payroll and will include arrears back to the 29 March pay anniversary date.
Holiday Pay Premium
We raised concerns with the Company last year regarding the calculation being used for holiday pay premium (HPP) and our belief it was resulting in an underpayment to staff. The current method of HPP calculation totals the financial amount paid in the reference period (one year) in respect of non-guaranteed earnings and divides this amount by the number of days in the reference period to generate a daily HPP rate. This is multiplied by the statutory leave entitlement (in days).
The main problem was that the calculation used was based on days rather than weeks, meaning that the yearly figure was divided by 365 days, which obviously includes non-working days, but then multiplied by the statutory leave allocation of 20 days rather than four weeks which would equate to 28 days on the same basis.
The Company has now advised us they are changing the basis of the calculation in response to "legal changes", but the investigation that prompted the change came about as a direct result of our challenge to the calculation methodology being used. The changes mean the calculation will now be based on a 52-week reference period. Statutory leave will also be revised to reflect the four-week entitlement within the European Working Time Directive. The revised method results in a 40% increase in HPP so is a very significant amount indeed. The revised HPP will be paid to employees in the 17 April payroll.
If you require any further information on the contents of this article, please contact one of your staff reps in the first instance. Please also discuss the contents of this article with your colleagues and encourage any non-members to join. The more members we have, the stronger we are.
