Judiciary employees submit petition regarding salary issue

Judicial sector employees submitted a petition to the President's Office yesterday outlining their concerns regarding the Pay Framework changes.

The petition was signed by court employees from Male' and various islands, with the petition requesting a solution be found for the salary concerns they have. The biggest concern is that even though Legal Officers will see an increase in responsibilities with the move to the state's Pay Framework, the salary has not been set in line with the amount of responsibilities they now shoulder.

The petition states that the basic responsibilities of many positions in the legal manager's framework of the state's public Pay Framework are responsibilities that are being undertaken currently by court Legal Officers. With that, the basic responsibilities that are described in one of the positions in the legal manager's framework, "Legal Counsel", are responsibilities that are being shouldered by Legal Officers.

The petition further states that in the situation where responsibilities that pertain to job metrics regarding various skillsets are included in the framework's position responsibilities, the weight of the responsibilities on the employee need to be determined, with the agency reserving the right to switch the employee to the job metrics after ascertaining the most amount of or the most important responsibilities.

As per the petition, the responsibilities that Legal Officers are currently in charge of are responsibilities that are described in positions as per legal manager's metrics. With that, Legal Officers are to be transferred to said position as per the framework, with the Department of Judicial Administration having no legal obstacles in mapping it out.

"And so it is clear that this is the most just path for employees when looking at this through a fair and equal lens. It is also apparent that employees are to receive benefits within regulations. Nevertheless, there is no legal manager position that is included in the job metrics specifically for the judiciary. And so, we submit this petition in order for such managerial positions to be included in the judiciary's job metrics," as is written in the petition.

The petition further states that if this solution cannot be granted, there are no legal obstacles for the Department of Judicial Administration if all Legal Officers are to be migrated to the position of Senior Court Legal Officer that is included in the judiciary's job metrics.

The petition reads that as legal employees of the judiciary do not have the opportunity to work on other legal matters, they are to receive a non-practice allowance.

When the Pay Framework was changed, the step allowance that has continuously been given to long-serving employees has been given to them in order to acknowledge their quality of work, which is a benefit included in their base remuneration. This is determined by employees receiving a certain percentage of marks within the quality of service system.

The petition also reads that the benefit being removed, or for salaries to be determined by looking at new employees and long-standing employees as equal is also a concern of employees who have been serving for a substantial amount of time.

In order to express their dissatisfaction regarding the changes to the Pay Framework, a large number of judicial employees attended their offices in all-black attire this week as a sign of silent protest.