Glasgow, Equal Pay, Foxes and Hen Houses
Margaret Taylor makes a number of valid points about the fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council in this opinion piece for The Herald.
But she's not correct about the aim of any industrial action that takes place in Glasgow in the weeks ahead - because the intention not is to bring about an immediate or overnight solution.
Rather the purpose of any industrial action is to bring about some much needed, long-overdue change in the Council's approach to settlement, in particular the fact that the promise of 'serious negotiations' has never materialised.
After 9 months and 21 separate settlement meetings, not a single thing of real substance has been agreed and the claimants' representatives (A4ES, GMB and Unison) believe this is for two main reasons:
1) The same group of senior council officials who have been defending and trying to justify Glasgow's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme for years have been left in charge of the negotiations - which probably explains why there have been no negotiations.
2) The elected politicians have refused to engage with the claimants representatives which means that they rely on the advice of these same senior officials when they are deciding how to proceed.
If strikes do go ahead, they will focus public attention on the fact that this dispute ought to have been settled years ago, but that doesn't excuse the strategy the City Council is following in 2018 - which amounts to leaving the 'fox' in charge of the 'hen house'.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16954006.margaret-taylor-forget-strikes-equal-pay-women-should-get-marching/
Margaret Taylor: Forget strikes, equal-pay women should get marching
Margaret Taylor @MagsTaylorHT - The Herald
If hundreds of boiler-suited men marching on parliament can prompt government intervention, just think what thousands of tabard-wearing women could achieve.
WHEN the Labour Party was ousted from government at the 2010 general election, departing Treasury secretary Liam Byrne left a note for his coalition successor in which he cheerily warned “I’m afraid there is no money”.
If you think that was in poor taste it is nothing compared to the metaphorical two fingers the party gave the SNP in Glasgow when, last year, it bequeathed the nationalists not only control of the city council, but of its blatantly unwinnable equal-pay fight too. Cue a couple of decisions from the Court of Session and the current administration has been left staring down the barrel of a multi-million-pound liability that should have been settled years ago.
The problem is that the longer the issue has been allowed to fester the bigger that liability has become and the authority appears to be at a loss as to how to deal with it. Though council leader Susan Aitken committed in January to agreeing a settlement this year, so far nothing has been forthcoming, with the women’s legal and trade union representatives accusing the council of burying its head in the sand over even the most basic of issues.
Unsurprisingly, the women are irate, and those who are members of the Unison and GMB trade unions are preparing for strike action that could see key cleaning, caring and cooking services in the city grind to a halt in the coming weeks. Yet while their anger is understandable and their cause is deserving of support, the prospect of the strike is worrying precisely because of what it is designed to achieve.
All industrial action has an end point in sight, whether it be to increase wages or protect existing rights, and the end point for the Glasgow strikers is to force an immediate settlement of these long-overdue claims. The problem is, if Glasgow settles now it is likely to open itself up to further claims of discrimination in the future, with the perfect storm of its discredited pay structure and its obligations under pensions legislation putting any woman approaching retirement at risk.
A 2014 update to local government pension rules means that pension contributions must be paid on all equal-pay settlements. Yet because pensions are calculated based on salary, any claimant retiring before Glasgow replaces its pay scheme - something it has committed to do, but which could take years to complete - will have paid extra into the Strathclyde fund without the guarantee of receiving the correct pension in return.
No wonder Glasgow is baulking at the prospect of brokering a deal. Nor is it the only local authority to freeze in the face of its pension obligations, with the Herald on Sunday revealing at the weekend that councils across the country are playing fast and loose with the pensions legislation, to the degree that some are complying with it while some are merely thinking about it and others are ignoring it altogether.
The end result is that women are being discriminated against simply because of the area they chose to live and work in, with an equal-pay cleaner in Dumfries and Galloway getting her pension rerated long before the law was changed to say that was her right while her counterpart in Argyll & Bute has effectively been told to whistle.
And so, while some councils grapple with what should be a simple concept, the women who help keep this country going with their daily graft are being left to suffer the consequences. Indeed, while it seems clear that Glasgow City Council has neither the means nor the wherewithal to give its equal-pay women what they deserve, the scatter-gun approach councils in general are taking to observing their pension obligations is creating yet another layer of inequality. The fact that that layer lies between the very women that were discriminated against in the first place is beyond ironic - and beyond unacceptable.
Which is why, far from taking their strike to the streets of Glasgow, the city’s workers should be leading women from every part of the country in a march to the gates of Holyrood to demand the Scottish Government intervenes. Councils have had long enough to tinker around the edges of equal pay; it is time a higher power took control to ensure uniform justice for all.
Such action would likely be a success, too, if recent history is anything to go by. Indeed, just last year First Minister Nicola Sturgeon cut short an official engagement in Germany to come to the aid of the male workers of troubled engineering firm BiFab after they took the fight for their livelihoods to the streets of Edinburgh. The Government handed over a total of £35 million and helped broker the buyout of BiFab by Canadian firm JV Driver, even though the dire straits the business had been floundering in meant practically all the workers went on to lose their jobs anyway.
But if hundreds of boiler-suited men marching on parliament can prompt such a reaction, just think what thousands of tabard-wearing women could achieve. Who knows, they might even be able to force the Government to sort this whole mess out in time for the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Equal Pay Act. And wouldn’t that be something
If hundreds of boiler-suited men marching on parliament can prompt government intervention, just think what thousands of tabard-wearing women could achieve.
WHEN the Labour Party was ousted from government at the 2010 general election, departing Treasury secretary Liam Byrne left a note for his coalition successor in which he cheerily warned “I’m afraid there is no money”.
If you think that was in poor taste it is nothing compared to the metaphorical two fingers the party gave the SNP in Glasgow when, last year, it bequeathed the nationalists not only control of the city council, but of its blatantly unwinnable equal-pay fight too. Cue a couple of decisions from the Court of Session and the current administration has been left staring down the barrel of a multi-million-pound liability that should have been settled years ago.
The problem is that the longer the issue has been allowed to fester the bigger that liability has become and the authority appears to be at a loss as to how to deal with it. Though council leader Susan Aitken committed in January to agreeing a settlement this year, so far nothing has been forthcoming, with the women’s legal and trade union representatives accusing the council of burying its head in the sand over even the most basic of issues.
Unsurprisingly, the women are irate, and those who are members of the Unison and GMB trade unions are preparing for strike action that could see key cleaning, caring and cooking services in the city grind to a halt in the coming weeks. Yet while their anger is understandable and their cause is deserving of support, the prospect of the strike is worrying precisely because of what it is designed to achieve.
All industrial action has an end point in sight, whether it be to increase wages or protect existing rights, and the end point for the Glasgow strikers is to force an immediate settlement of these long-overdue claims. The problem is, if Glasgow settles now it is likely to open itself up to further claims of discrimination in the future, with the perfect storm of its discredited pay structure and its obligations under pensions legislation putting any woman approaching retirement at risk.
A 2014 update to local government pension rules means that pension contributions must be paid on all equal-pay settlements. Yet because pensions are calculated based on salary, any claimant retiring before Glasgow replaces its pay scheme - something it has committed to do, but which could take years to complete - will have paid extra into the Strathclyde fund without the guarantee of receiving the correct pension in return.
No wonder Glasgow is baulking at the prospect of brokering a deal. Nor is it the only local authority to freeze in the face of its pension obligations, with the Herald on Sunday revealing at the weekend that councils across the country are playing fast and loose with the pensions legislation, to the degree that some are complying with it while some are merely thinking about it and others are ignoring it altogether.
The end result is that women are being discriminated against simply because of the area they chose to live and work in, with an equal-pay cleaner in Dumfries and Galloway getting her pension rerated long before the law was changed to say that was her right while her counterpart in Argyll & Bute has effectively been told to whistle.
And so, while some councils grapple with what should be a simple concept, the women who help keep this country going with their daily graft are being left to suffer the consequences. Indeed, while it seems clear that Glasgow City Council has neither the means nor the wherewithal to give its equal-pay women what they deserve, the scatter-gun approach councils in general are taking to observing their pension obligations is creating yet another layer of inequality. The fact that that layer lies between the very women that were discriminated against in the first place is beyond ironic - and beyond unacceptable.
Which is why, far from taking their strike to the streets of Glasgow, the city’s workers should be leading women from every part of the country in a march to the gates of Holyrood to demand the Scottish Government intervenes. Councils have had long enough to tinker around the edges of equal pay; it is time a higher power took control to ensure uniform justice for all.
Such action would likely be a success, too, if recent history is anything to go by. Indeed, just last year First Minister Nicola Sturgeon cut short an official engagement in Germany to come to the aid of the male workers of troubled engineering firm BiFab after they took the fight for their livelihoods to the streets of Edinburgh. The Government handed over a total of £35 million and helped broker the buyout of BiFab by Canadian firm JV Driver, even though the dire straits the business had been floundering in meant practically all the workers went on to lose their jobs anyway.
But if hundreds of boiler-suited men marching on parliament can prompt such a reaction, just think what thousands of tabard-wearing women could achieve. Who knows, they might even be able to force the Government to sort this whole mess out in time for the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Equal Pay Act. And wouldn’t that be something
Glasgow - 'Defending the Indefensible' (07/12/17)
Not surprisingly, there's been lots of interest in yesterday's post about settlement negotiations getting underway with Glasgow City Council, at long last.
"About time!", "Well done!", "Good luckI" - are among the many comments I have received in the past few days, but a word of caution is required as well because this was just a brief two hour meeting which did not tackle any of the big, outstanding issues.
So while the political leadership of the City Council has reaffirmed its commitment to 'fix' Glasgow's equal pay problems and ensure that the claimants 'get what they are due' the process is still being driven by the council's senior officials and advisers.
The point being that many of these senior officials and advisers are responsible for getting the City Council into this mess in the first place and only a short time ago they were trying everything they could to justify Glasgow's discredited WPBR pay scheme which, if you ask me, is the root of the problem.
Local politicians seem to be doing their best to 'rise above' the settlement process, as if senior officials can relied upon to come up with a quick fix, while Glasgow's MSPs, MPs and elected councillors try not to get too involved.
I've heard reports of local politicians claiming that they can't comment on the ongoing Glasgow dispute or offer any support because equal pay is not their area of expertise or responsibility.
Now this is disingenuous, to put it mildly.
Because it doesn't take a job evaluation (JE) expert to say that Glasgow's WPBR pay scheme is full of arbitrary, completely invented 'rules' which are designed to favour traditional male jobs - while discriminating against the jobs done by carers, cooks, cleaners, catering workers, clerical staff, classroom assistants and so on.
For example, as explained in the post below, the WPBR (NSWP) rewards employees who have a contract to work 37 hours a week or more - but everyone who is contracted to less than 37 hours every week (i.e. most women workers) gets a fat, big NOTHING for their efforts.
In other words it doesn't require a rocket scientist or a JE specialist to agree that the WPBR is blatantly discriminatory because it's as plain as the nose on your face, to anyone who is prepared to listen to the evidence and come to a reasoned judgment.
Which explains, of course, why three senior judges in the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, decided unanimously that Glasgow City Council's WPBR pay scheme is 'unfit for purpose'.
So why would Glasgow's politicians have any difficulty in coming off the fence and stating where they stand on an issue of such importance to their local constituents who have been cheated of their rights to 'equal pay for work of equal value' for the past 10 years.
I have been keeping MSPs and MPs up to date on developments in Glasgow by circulating regular posts from the blog site and I've also offered to provide any further information they require.
Let's see what next Monday's 'second' meeting brings - hopefully an intent on both sides to get down to business and an acceptance from council officials that trying to justify the WPBR is akin to 'defending the indefensible'.
Glasgow - Foxes and Hen Houses (07/12/17)
Stefan Cross QC shares his thoughts on the fight for equal pay in Glasgow after the first 'settlement discussion' meeting with the SNP Leader, Susan Aitken, and senior council officials.
If you ask me, the City Council's approach is akin to putting a 'fox in charge of the hen house' because the people who have cheated a largely female workforce out of its right to equal pay for the past 10 years are now handed the responsibility to put things right.
"Ha, ha, ha", I thought to myself - except this is really serious rather than funny.
For example, the new leadership brought in an outside, independent body (in the shape of the Improvement Service) to review Glasgow's decision-making processes with the aim of transforming the City Council into a 'world leader' in terms of transparency and openness.
The logical conclusion being that existing council officials could not be trusted to 'mark their own homework' when it comes to openness and transparency.
Yet for some peculiar and unexplained reason senior officials are being allowed to mark their own homework on the much bigger and, arguably, far more significant issue of equal pay.
Let's see what happens at next Monday's second settlement discussion meeting, but so far I'm less than impressed.
LOOKING THEM IN THE EYE
As you know we had our first meeting with the council yesterday and once again it proves that negotiations are always different when you actually get into the same room with the other side. You can learn a lot just by peoples attitude and body language in addition to what is actually said on the subject of the discussions.
Although I was disappointed that Susan Aitken has taken the decision to have a back seat in the negotiations, she was at least honest and clear and open with us. I also believe that she was genuine in her desire to see a resolution to these cases.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the officers. My impression was that there was still a concern on their part in protecting their reputations and decisions they were involved in in the past rather than looking forward and do what’s best for the council and the staff. They also appear to still have a completely different view of the effect of the Court of session decisions and its implications to us. This is potentially a major stumbling block.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the approach to WPBR. Our view is that it should be scrapped and a new pay structure implemented as soon as possible. This will draw a line under the scheme and the litigation and enable everybody to move forward. Unfortunately the officers seem to think that this will be an admission they got it wrong and their approach is to simply try and find fixes to the scheme to enable it to continue but with some minor modifications.
Despite all the litigation they still can’t see what’s wrong with the scheme! They have asked us to prepare a paper setting out what’s wrong with it! We will do this but it shouldn’t be necessary and is going to cause delay.
In any event doesn’t matter if we are right, what matters is what this reveals about the officers attitude. Rather than fresh eyes and a fresh approach it’s a desire to preserve the past as much as possible.
This is going to be a long uphill battle if it stays like this.
We did make progress on their demand for secrecy. It was agreed that base line would be openness but items would be flagged up as confidential in the minutes. This means there might be delay in reporting back to you after meetings whilst minutes are circulated but it’s a good step forward.
We also agreed twice monthly meetings. So not all bad yesterday. There’s going to be a lot of work but good that there’s a commitment to that as well.
Hope all that helps.
