14
For the time being however, any pressure to raise the educational entry qualifications above the level necessary to permit the competent performance of the job concerned should be firmly resisted. Certainly no account should normally be taken of the fact that persons with qualifications above the minimum elect to enter a particular grade. This
is their own choice. Their better education should, if put to good use, give them a distinct advantage in proving their ability and suitability for advancement. It should not entitle them to more than the rate for the job based on the essential qualifications.
36.
In no circumstances should educational qualifications be the be all and end all in setting pay levels for civil service grades. While educational qualifications should set the starting pay benchmarks other factors must be taken into account to determine the rate for the job.
37.
At this point we would again refer to the representations we have received that the rate for the job should be determined by job evaluation based on factor analysis. We tend to agree that there is a need for a job evaluation exercise. We would however sound a note of caution to those who see this as a panacea for all comparability problems. In conducting a job evaluation exercise the factors to be used, the weights to be attached and the application of the weights to be attached to a particular job, are all a matter of judgement, a judgement which must be made against the background of the economic and social circumstances of the community in which the job exists.
38.
In our opinion it is the factors to which we refer in the following sub-paragraphs which should be taken into account in setting pay scales.
(a)
Dangerous or obnoxious duties
(i) Duties where the work is generally recognised as being particularly distasteful or dangerous. We would repeat the examples quoted in the Consultative Document : i.e. working with explosives or in a mortuary.
Some
(ii) We would take the opportunity to point out that there appears to be an uneven application of eligibility for obnoxious duties allowance and a need therefore to rationalise its payment. staff whose work involves little more than exposure to the dust and grime of everyday life receive the allowance while others, whose work appears to us to be genuinely obnoxious, do not.
/(b)