Grades and categories of employees

1. The national grading structure and the job evaluation scheme used to establish it to take full account of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and Equal Pay (Amendment) Regulations 1983.

2. The National Council has agreed a revised grading structure to which are attached job outlines for the jobs included.

The national jobs have been allocated grades as follows:

3. There are some good general conditions applying to all jobs.

These are:

1. all duties must be carried out to comply with
   1. the Health and Safety at Work Act
   2. Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments and Regulations and other Legal requirements
   3. nationally agreed codes of practice which are relevant
2. all duties will be carried out in the working conditions normally inherent in the particular job
3. all necessary paperwork must be completed
4. duties will be carried out for jobs up to and including those in the same grade, provided such duties are within the competence of the employee.

4. The job outlines for the national jobs are as follows:

• Care and Domestic Assistants
• Cooks
• Drivers and Gardeners
• Leisure Attendants and Roadworkers
• School Caretaking

5. Introduction

The system for grading jobs is explained in greater detail in the National Council’s joint document 'Review of Grading Structure: Assimilation and Assessment' dated August 1987. What follows therefore is a brief summary of these procedures.

6. Nationally Graded Jobs

For jobs which correspond to national jobs the process to bring them onto the structure is a broad comparison between the duties, responsibilities and other conditions in which the job is carried out with the relevant national job outline. Where the two accord, ie where there are no clear or major differences which would affect the overall grading, the job should be assimilated to the structure at the appropriate grade.

7. Locally Graded Jobs

Local jobs are all those which have not been examined in the national job evaluation exercise or those where broad comparison with the relevant national job shows there are clear and major differences. The National Joint Council has agreed that these jobs shall be assessed and brought onto the structure using factor comparison as outlined in 8 below.

8. Factor Comparison

Factor comparison entails looking at a local job and comparing it on a factor by factor basis with a number of jobs chosen from the national structure as comparators.

The process is therefore:

1. to identify comparator jobs from the national structure. These should be chosen on the basis that they have duties or responsibilities common with local jobs or other features which are relevant to the local job
   
   
2. by reference to:
   1. the job outlines of the comparator national jobs and the commentary on them
   2. the individual factor scores for these jobs (Appendix A) and
   3. where necessary, the job evaluation scheme and notes for guidance (Appendix B)
      
      Assess the local job with the comparators on a factor by factor basis and so decide on a level for each factor for the local job
      
      
3. obtain the total score for the local jobs by reference to the points for each factor level in Appendix C of this section
   
   
4. translate the total points score into the appropriate national grade (Appendix C)