BOSSES at Blackburn Town Hall today insisted that they are not guilty of double standards in a long-running dispute over working conditions.

Chief executive Phil Watson has denied claims that bosses have kept privileges such as overtime pay, holidays and mileage allowance while the workers have lost theirs to help the council pay the costs of a new national agreement on working conditions.

He said chief officers had lost many of their privileges long before consideration was given to the working conditions of employees.

The new agreement has cost the council hundreds of thousands of pounds and employees held a town hall square protest in March to express their anger about what they saw as attacks on their working conditions to cover the cash shortfall.

But claims that bosses are expecting staff to bear the full burden of the changes have been refuted by the council's chief executive. A memo which was leaked to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph and featured in Tuesday's paper prompted town hall staff to contact the newspaper and ask why their bosses weren't losing their overtime, holidays and car mileage.

In the memo Mr Watson said unless agreement is reached soon the tightening up of working conditions may even have to be increased and officers may be dismissed and re-employed under new contracts so that the council can make certain it will meet the cash savings it has set itself.

And in direct response to accusations of double standards Mr Watson today added that the working conditions of chief officers had already been reviewed in the run up to unitary status in 1998 when most directors had to re-apply for their jobs which were offered with different terms of conditions of employment. He said: "This meant a five to eight day reduction in leave entitlement for some officers.

"I think it is important to highlight that many chief officers work between 40 to 50 hours per week. They do not receive overtime payments and are not entitled to time in lieu of work over and above their contracted hours.

"Subsistence allowances are also the same for all staff regardless of scale."

"In addition to the earlier review, a further review of chief officer's terms and conditions is currently under way."

One anonymous caller from the town hall who had asked about what chief officers were doing to help meet the required savings added: "People at the town hall are very angry about what is happening.

We are, in effect, being blackmailed when they tell us we could be dismissed and re-employed on new contracts.

"If they had just taken our hours down to 37 per week and left it at that there would have been no problem."

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