The Fight for Equal Pay in Glasgow

The SNP's annual conference gets underway in Glasgow shortly and Scotland are playing Slovenia in a World Cup playoff showdown at 5pm - so the city centre will be jumping later this evening I imagine, especially if the Scottish football team can pull off a famous victory.   

I've had a look at the conference agenda and I can't see anything that relates directly to equal pay - the nearest thing that I can see is the following resolution on public sector pay restraint which is due to be debated on Monday morning.

END PUBLIC SECTOR PAY RESTRAINT

Conference welcomes the announcement by the Scottish Government to end the Public Sector pay cap and that the Scottish Government will work with trade unions and staff to implement fair and appropriate future pays awards.

Conference also notes that the pay of many public sector workers in Scotland is decided at a UK level and therefore calls upon the UK Government to follow the example of the Scottish Government and end the pay restraint on public sector wages.

Conference recognises the valuable contribution public sector employees make, working hard to ensure the effective delivery of public services at a time when budgets are being squeezed, inflation is rising and social security cuts are impacting on working households. Now is the time to scrap the cap on public sector wages.

PORTOBELLO & CRAIGMILLAR BRANCH; SNP TRADE UNION GROUP

So this may be the best and only opportunity for delegates to raise the fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council.

If readers have any feedback from the conference, I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts. 

     

Height of Hypocrisy (27/09/17)

Here are some of the comments I've received in response to yesterday's post about the 'height of hypocrisy' at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.

Now politics is a rough old business, as everyone knows, but the big Labour councils and the Labour supporting trade unions have 'part of the problem' for years in the fight for equal pay in Scotland.

In Glasgow City Council, the local trade unions agreed to the introduction of the 'new' WPBR pay arrangements introduced in 2007 which were recently judged by the Court of Session to be 'unfit for purpose'.

The GMB did not even support the A4ES led challenge to the City Council's WPBR pay arrangements, of course, yet the union now pretends to have been fighting for equal pay in Glasgow alongside the other claimant organisations.

So while Labour may be suddenly in favour of equal pay at the 2017 Labour Party conference in Brighton, the truth is that Labour has been fighting 'tooth and nail' against equal pay in Glasgow City Council for the past 10 years. 


Have e-mailed her asking who does her research and recommended your blog for further investigation...so far no answer shall remind her tomorrow.

S

The thing about this is, whilst it is hypocrisy, people often do not remember who caused the problem as many of them have been and gone within the ten years. SNP made a bad choice or was given bad advice in seeking leave to appeal. So now if the new council do not fix what they were elected to do according to their manifesto, they will take the fall for something Labour councils and unions helped to create. I keep getting the same generic email telling me it is just to seek clarity from the SNP. I did ask which part were they not clear on? The fact that the court found the WPBR not fit for purpose and clearly favoured the male jobs. I have suggested according to your advice about asking Audit Scotland to help as this might help them more than seeking leave to appeal to gain clarity. They state it is inherited, well that I do know as I have worked in my job for more than 17 years. I also think that she should get your brasso award for standing up and blaming someone else for what her party created.

T

Shocking. Every employee who pays union fees every month should stop paying now. They keep the Labour Party afloat with your money.

E


Damn cheek labour has . Do they not realise that's partly what lost them the councils .
Only one word can describe labour these days with regards to there councils (corrupt)

M


I cant believe that. Labour caused this debacle

P

Corrupt to the core.


J


Unbelievable


J

Can't help but wonder-and I am honestly not accusing but simply asking-why is it the snp glasgow council gave the janitors(predominantly males) more than they were fighting for yet us (predominantly female)are seeing the Glasgow snp council appealing....? Is this just same old sexist attitudes of only some wimmen doin' 'wee jobs' anyway?

M

  

Glasgow - Height of Hypocrisy (26/09/17)

How's this for shameful and shameless behaviour from a Scottish delegate to the 2017 Labour Party conference in Brighton.

The truth is that the pay arrangements judged to be 'unfit for purpose' by Scotland's highest civl court, the Court of Session, were put in place by a Labour run council in 2007 with the support of the local Labour supporting unions: the GMB, Unison and Unite.

The new SNP led Glasgow City Council have some way to go in clearing up this mess and if you ask me, they should not have sought leave to appeal the unanimous Court of Session decision because the council's WPBR pay arrangements are indefensible.

But the old-fashioned Labour and trade union left has been 'part of the problem' over equal pay for years and it's the absolute height of hypocrisy for them to try and lay the blame in Glasgow at the door of the SNP.