THE Finance Ministry is preparing legislation that aims to restore some calm to the public sector by changing (again) the way in which overtime pay is calculated.
Under a government bill incorporated into the 2012 budget, public-sector employees are paid an overtime rate which is based on the lowest pay grade in a given service – a significant departure from past practice, when civil servants were paid a rate analogous to their actual pay grade.
This came about as a result of an amendment to the bill that was pushed through by legislators who, although motivated by a desire to make cutbacks to the budget, admit they may have acted too zealously in this particular case.
As things stand, if the lowest pay scale is €1,200, an employee earning twice or three times as much would still be paid the same overtime rate as his or her colleague on the lowest rung of the pay scale. This was aimed at restricting the abuse of the overtime pay system by the highest-paid civil servants, some of whom managed to double their annual earnings.
But now, many employees – especially those on the higher end of a “combined salary scale” – are refusing to put in overtime, causing operational problems to a number of government departments.
That’s because the majority of civil servants happen to be either on these combined salary scales or on the A8 pay scale and above – the higher end of the ladder.
“Previously, high earners would kill to work overtime; now, they’re making up all sorts of excuses to avoid doing it,” said one MP speaking on condition of anonymity.
An example of a combined salary scale is, for instance, when the scale A5 (I) is added, giving one more increment of the top of the scale A5, that is, extending the number of years the holder will continue to receive automatic wage increments.
According to data furnished by the Treasury, the number of salary scales, combined salary scales and fixed salaries is a whopping 96.
One of the most common combined salary scales in the civil service is the A2-5-7 scale. A civil servant on the A8 scale might be required to do overtime work normally designated for a person on the immediately preceding scale. But in such a case he or she is paid the rate corresponding for the lowest stepping on that scale.
With the new overtime scheme having turned into a disincentive, the Finance Ministry is proposing a tweak: where there is a need for overtime work, priority will be given to those who are on lower salary grades, so as to minimise the cost to state coffers.
In cases where only high earners can execute a certain job, they will be paid overtime but not according to their actual pay grades. Rather, a civil servant would receive a rate based on the immediately preceding salary scale. For high-earning civil servants, this is a vast improvement on the current regime.
Pambos Papageorgiou, an AKEL MP on the House Finance Committee, said the government would likely produce a bill early on Monday so that it could be put to the plenum next Thursday.
