Regional Pay

[Jeremy]

From personal experience... large IT consultancy firms, who employ tech staff around the UK. Salaries don't really vary between the M3/M4 offices (think Woking, Maidenhead, Reading, etc) and the offices in the rest of the country.

[Huguenot]

I can see plenty of scenarios where that takes place in the private sector.

For example in the alrady well paid digital industry, developers will frequently need to offer bigger salaries and perks to programmers to compensate them if they have to move away from London.

It's a supply and demand issue.

[Huguenot]

Cross-post, and conincidentally it's the same industry!

[Chippy Minton]

Unions obviously believe in collective bargaining, but collective bargaining isn't always national.

For example, Fujistu, Rolls Royce, BAE Systems etc all have numerous employment bases throughout the country, but all have regional or workplace bargaining units.

In the public sector, unions won't have a national bargaining unit for all the country's local authority workers - for example e.g. the bargaining unit in Southampton will negotiate with Southampton City Council and will be totally separate from, say, the bargaining unit at Newcastle City Council.

It seems to me this is a sensible way of doing things. Obviously, the issues faced in, for example, Southampton can be totally different to Newcastle and so should be agreed locally. It also prevents widespread disputes/strikes on issues that are essentially local.