Did you know that after the initial training, the junior grade of
coastguard earns £5.46 an hour - equating to just under £12,000 a year
annual salary? Not surprisingly this doesn't compare to well with
other emergency service control staff (Fire start on £19000), and the
guys and girls are more than a little bit disgruntled. Combined with
an ever increasing workload and a Search and Rescue coordination role
that is much more in depth than any other emergency services control
room, there is a little scope for a pay rise.
For a long time (3 years) Hamish and colleagues have been promised one
sort of pay increase or another, none of which have materialised.
Therefore people are starting to seek other means of raising their
profile. For about 2 months now they have been "working to rule" not
completing various bits of paperwork and the like which don't impact
on the public but they hoped would affect management. So far it seems
to have had little effect.
Hamish is at the top of the scale, and yet the job description they
have for this position in the Civil Service is 'Administrative
Assistant'. They do a lot more than filing and photocopying - they
take the mayday call, they organise the search and rescue, they advise
the Army and Resuce teams as to how to proceed. THEY SAVE PEOPLE'S
LIVES! And the salary of a top Admin Assistant??? £23,000 p.a.
Please - go to the link below, and sign the petition for a review of
the Coastguards role and pay:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Coastguard/
So far, the petition only has 1600 signatories - please, sign the
petition, pass on this email, let's raise the profile of this
petition. It doesn't seem right that the person who takes your Mayday
call gets paid less than the pereson who asks if you want chips with
your Bigmac!
Many thanks
Starchild
