Sticking Plasters Won't Do



Here's a comment on yesterday's post which 'hit the nail on the head' regarding the awful behaviour of senior officials over Glasgow's discredited WPBR pay scheme.

"They can't stick a plaster on the WPBR and fix it as it's unfit for purpose so therefore they need to bin it and get a new JE in place. What language do they not understand when the highest court in Scotland threw it out of court - laughing at them."

Couldn't have put it better myself.

  


Glasgow - Equal Pay Update (08/02/18)


Image result for circumlocution office + images


Charles Dickens wrote about the Circumlocution Office in his famous book 'Little Dorrit' way back in the 1850s, but the same bureaucratic mentality seems to hold sway in the minds of senior officials in Glasgow City Council who appear to be doing their level best to frustrate and delay meaningful negotiations to end the council's long-running equal pay dispute. 

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.



Now the views of the Council Leader Susan Aitken couldn't be clearer, but the behaviour of senior officials stands in stark contrast as they fight to hold onto a  a completely discredited WPBR pay scheme which has been characterised by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, as 'unfit for purpose'.

So it seems to me that the same officials who brought in the WPBR, under mysterious and unexplained circumstances, are now trying to circumvent the will of the council's leadership.

And that can't be allowed to happen because these bureaucrats are acting as both judge and jury in their own cause.


  


Susan Slates the Naysayers (02/02/18)


Glasgow City Council's leader Susan Aitken responds to the naysayers and doom-mongers on Twitter - and sets out her stall on the challenges facing the council over equal pay.

Good for her, I say.

What a difference from the negative, cheeseparing attitude of previous Labour council leaders who proclaimed their great support for equal pay while presiding over pay arrangements which blatantly favoured traditional male jobs.  

And while I'm on my high horse aren't people disgusted at the former senior official who has been telling The Times that equal pay represents a significant threat to council jobs and services! 

If 'Mr Anonymous' would like to step out of the shadows, I'd be happy to debate the issues with him publicly including the advice he gave to the Labour council leader, Stephen Purcell, in 2005 over the introduction of the now widely discredited Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR).



A short thread on equal pay. Lots of inaccurate claims being made, so a few points of fact follow.

The £500m bill figure that is being widely quoted is pure speculation at this stage. The final settlement will be established through negotiations - that’s what they’re for - and no one yet knows what the figure will be.

The final bill for the Council will probably be substantial - we’re prepared for that. But the City Government does not believe it has to be ‘catastrophic’ or that we will have to have a fire sale of assets or make substantial cuts or job losses.

Funding any settlement will be extremely challenging but other local authorities have done it, without making huge cuts. We will explore all the financial options available to us and minimise the impact on jobs and services.

I have consistently said this issue is of Glasgow City Council’s making and it is ours to solve. We will NOT and have not asked for a loan or a bailout from either the Scottish or UK govts. We will seek advice and support to find innovative funding solutions.

The bottom line is that the SNP City Government believes that gender inequality and discrimination are not a price worth paying to spare difficulty and expense.

Resolving equal pay in Glasgow is about equality, fairness and good governance. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ll get there.


  


Glasgow and Pay Discrimination (28/01/18)


Here's an exchange of emails I had recently with a councillor from Glasgow City Council's Labour Group, Soryia Siddique. 

Now I'm all in favour of dialogue and discussion and I would be quite happy to meet with Soryia for a further discussion - I'm sure that some of Glasgow's equal pay claimants would be pleased to do so as well.

But the fact of the matter is that the Labour leadership of the City Council showed no interest in dialogue for years.

Instead, Labour fought tooth and nail to defend Glasgow's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme which is why I observe that some councillors in Glasgow would struggle to acknowledge blatant pay discrimination, if it jumped up and bit them on the arse.

  

Dear Soryia

The Fight for Equal Pay in Glasgow

Many thanks for your email and comments about Glasgow and equal pay.

I'm afraid I don't recognise your description of the Labour Party in Glasgow City Council because my personal experience is that previous Labour administrations fought tooth and nail to defend the council's WPBR pay scheme for 10 full years.

The WPBR has now been condemned as 'unfit for purpose' by Scotland's highest civil court, the Court of Session, but A4ES has been highlighting its deficiencies and many problems ever since it was introduced. 

For example, one of its ridiculous and completely invented 'rules' is that only employees working 37 hours per week or more receive a £1,000 a year NSWP payment which conveniently excludes virtually all female workers in Glasgow City Council.

Now the scheme was deliberately designed in this way, i.e. to favour traditional male jobs over female dominated jobs, and there are many other examples I can share with you if you are genuinely interested in finding out more.

To be perfectly frank with you it should not have taken the Court of Session to 'call time' on the WPBR pay scheme - the city's councillors and senior officials should have done so a long time ago, but they were not listening to A4ES or the council's largely female workforce.

I met with the Labour leader of the City Council, Frank McAveety, in the summer of 2016 and tried to move these issues forward, but there was no willingness on Frank's part to engage with A4ES or listen to our concerns about the WPBR which was, of course, introduced by a previous Labour council in 2007.

If you ask me, some councillors in Glasgow would struggle to acknowledge blatant pay discrimination if it jumped up and bit them on the arse. 

If you would like to discuss these issues over a coffee, or perhaps meet with some of Glasgow's equal pay claimants, I would be more than happy to oblige.

A4ES represents a big majority of Glasgow's equal pay claimants, with 7,500 clients out of the total number of claims (11,000) registered, so far, with the Employment Tribunals.  

Kind regards



Mark Irvine


-----Original Message-----
From: Siddique, Soryia (Councillor) (Councillor) 
To: markirvine 
Sent: Thu, Jan 18, 2018 11:24 am
Subject: GLASGOW PAY JUSTICE CAMPAIGN

Hello Mr Irvine

Thank you for your recent comments regarding the Glasgow Pay Justice Campaign.

The issue of equal pay is a long-standing issue which the Council has been making efforts to address. In the last decade, the Labour administration had allocated substantial additional amounts to payroll to address those issues, as well as settling claims in the amount of £53.8m. However, we recognise that there are still outstanding claims, and we agree that there should be one table for negotiation. We expect all main stakeholders to be represented at that table, and that the Council will engage positively in those discussions.

Labour in Glasgow has led the way in protecting working conditions, and improving them. Those measures included ensuring that there were no compulsory redundancies across the Council and the introduction of the Glasgow Living Wage. Glasgow was the first council in Scotland to make that commitment, and ensures that employees’ right across the Council family are earning enough to make ends meet. These were commitments made in spite of £377million worth of cuts from the Scottish Government.

Labour have argued, and will continue to argue, for a fairer settlement from the Scottish Government. At the last Council meeting, we put forward a motion calling for that fairer deal. However, it was defeated by the current SNP administration. In these tough conditions for local government budgets, our priority must be on protecting those front line services from further cuts and campaigning to ensure that the Scottish Government gives our City the resources it needs to fulfil our City’s true potential.

Kind regards


Bailie Dr Soryia Siddique

Ward 8 – Southside Central
Glasgow City Council
City Chambers
Glasgow G2  1DU

  

Labour Has a Real Cheek! (20/01/18)



I didn't catch the Scottish Labour Party broadcast the other night in which Richard Leonard spoke about his enthusiastic support for equal pay.

But a reader drew the broadcast to my attention and we had the following email exchange.

Hi Mark

Have you seen Richard Leonard’s Labour Party Broadcast tonight - it’s as though Labour are claiming credit - they have always fought for Equal Pay - I’m gobsmacked!

L


Hi L

I'm afraid to say the Scottish Labour Party is totally without shame!

Mark


Absolutely!

L

My Brass neck of 2017 Award did of course go to the Scottish Labour Party for an unbelievably shameless speech by a Scottish delegate to the UK Labour conference in Brighton.

So it comes as no surprise that Richard Leonard is up to the same kind of tricks and readers will recall that Richard (a former GMB union official) failed to speak out when the chips were down in Glasgow City Council last week.

All we heard then from the Scottish Labour leader in the run-up to Thursday's crunch meeting on the fight for equal pay in Glasgow was the sound of silence.

   

Brass Neck of 2017 (29/12/18)

Image result for brasso + images

I have to admit that my 'Brass Neck of 2017' award was a very close run thing - with Frank McAveety, the GMB union, John Mason MSP and the Scottish Labour Party all in the running.

Until recently, John Mason was a strong favourite for his insulting and ridiculous comments about equal pay claimants in Glasgow 'paying' for their own employment rights to be upheld.

But the MSP for Shettleston has since been rebuked and taken to task by the Leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitkenwho has confirmed this is not the view of the SNP led administration. 

So the award goes instead to the Scottish Labour Party and a delegate from Cunninghame North CLP, Joanna Baxter, for this completely shameless speech to Labour's annual conference 2017 in Brighton. 

   

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.

  


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