'Fundamentally flawed'

Unite, the union representing staff at the Financial Conduct Authority has today (December 13) raised grave concerns about the City regulator’s pay and grading consultation, due to close in 7 days’ time.
 
Union members have formally written to the FCA CEO, Nikhil Rathi to express strong staff anxieties about the regulator’s ability to meet its legal responsibilities and regulatory functions as a result of this consultation. Unite has made it clear that the consultation lacks transparency, withholds key information from the workforce and has serious equality implications if the changes are imposed as planned.
 
Commenting, Unite national officer Dominic Hook said, “The Financial Conduct Authority must step back from the fundamentally flawed pay and conditions consultation which will deeply impact the workforce across the regulator. Unite has today written to the CEO, Nikhil Rathi to clearly set out staff concerns and call for the process to be paused.
 
“Despite Unite having spent months calling for more information and for the FCA to have meaningful discussions with its workforce the management continue to dismiss staff concerns and have thus far failed to justify these damaging proposals,” he added.
 
“Unite the union will continue to speak up for the regulator’s employees who the leadership simply dismiss as making ‘noise’,” Hook went on to say. “The dedicated and committed workforce in London and Edinburgh deserve much better treatment than they are currently receiving.
 
“It is not too late for the FCA to resolve this situation and show their staff that they value their tireless efforts throughout the last 18 months and their commitment to being the best possible regulator it can be.”

Key Unite concerns about the current FCA proposals being rushed through include double standards in benchmarking FCA staff and those at the top of the regulator; the impact the proposals will have on equality; ‘levelling down’ across FCA offices, with FCA staff in Edinburgh set to be particularly hard-hit by the proposals to salary changes outside London; and discrimination against graduates.

You can find out more about Unite’s concerns in detail here.

By Saba Edwards