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from us is material we have referred to it in this Report.
1.5
In accepting our Report No. 2, the Government also asked us to take note of a number of representations received from both staff and management regarding our recommendations and to take account of these in our future review programme. In this respect our approach has been to study the representations to see to what extent they contain new evidence which would justify amending our earlier recommendations. Such cases were few and are dealt with in this Report.
1.6
It is our policy not to review pay scales and grade structures in isolation. We wish to emphasise that to be assessed satisfactorily and fairly grades need to be examined together with other comparable grades. This will be undertaken in the regular programme of the Standing Commission and we will con- tinue to take account of comments from staff and management.
1.7
During the past few months we have found that our role and functions are still not fully understood by some staff and in some cases even by management. Some have seen us as an arbitrator or conciliator in disputes between Government and its staff. In fact our duty is to advise His Excellency the Governor on the pay and structure of civil service grades, and on any other issues which are referred to us under our Terms of Reference. This we do after taking full account of the views of staff and management and with due regard to the civil service as a whole and to wider community interests. If a dispute arises from the acceptance of any of our recommendations and if substantial new evidence is produced, we are always prepared to include a re-examination of the recommendations in one of our future reviews, but we do not allow the fact that the dispute exists to influence the priorities we allocate to our work, for if we were to do so we would be working under duress.
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A further area in which there is misunderstanding is in relation to the annual general pay awards. A number of representations from staff seek pay adjustments on the grounds of the increase in the cost of living or because of inflation. The recommendations for general pay awards arise from the annual pay trend surveys with which we are not at present involved. Our responsibility is to advise on the appropriate pay points for individual grades and ranks within the established framework of the scales we have recommended or endorsed.
1.9
Throughout this Report, where scales are quoted they refer to points on the revised 51-point Master Pay Scale, unless otherwise indicated. In the Chapters dealing with grade pay scales we give the number of posts in each grade as taken from the approved "Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the year ending 31st March 1981."
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