Edinburgh City Council
Edinburgh City Council is now firmly in the spotlight following Glasgow's decision to reach an 'out of court' settlement of their equal pay claims.
Scotland's capital city and second largest council is now between a rock and a hard place - with Edinburgh very much on the back foot, as the old east west rivalry comes into play.
Why? Because the legal arguments about equal pay are exactly the same at both ends of the M8 - there's nowhere for Edinburgh council to hide, which its highly paid, senior officials know only too well.
Some enterprising Action 4 Equality clients have already been in touch with the former leader of the council - Donald Anderson - to ask why he failed to implement the equal pay (single status)agreement back in 1999, as the employers promised.
What they got was the usual politician's answer. Because although Donald Anderson has stepped down as council leader, he is still fighting the Edinburgh South seat as a potential Labour MSP.
The truth is that there's no good explanation as to why everyone sat on their backsides for so long - other than the honest one. Put simply, the employers and the trade unions had other priorities than looking after low paid women council employees.
The employers and the unions talk a good fight, of course: committed to equal opportunities, against discrimination of any kind, blah blah blah. But when push comes to shove they're not nearly as determined or progressive as they like people to believe.
The truth is that the 1999 equal pay agreement was the subject of painstaking negotiations for years and years. Everyone involved on both the employer and trade union sides of the negotiating table knew precisely what they were signing up to at the time. God knows, the discussions took long enough.
So, don't be taken in by their crocodile tears when they say someone else was to blame or that the poor dears didn't really understand what they were letting themselves in for.
The control and make up of Edinburgh City Council is likely to change after the council elections on 3rd May. The Labour party runs the council at the moment and has done for years. A new coalition is on the cards, but exactly who will lead the new administration is guesswork at this stage.
Edinburgh officials have committed the council to a 1 July 2007 deadline for introducing a new pay and grading structure, which is what the council originally agreed to do back in 1999. The implementation date (for the new pay structure) is much later than most other councils, but it is potentially very significant and may well concentrate minds on how to get the council out of its current equal pay mess.
Why? Because Glasgow used the introduction of a new pay structure (albeit on a different date) as the trigger for reaching a settlement of its outstanding claims.
So, it's doubly important now to hold Edinburgh's politicians to account - before and after the elections - as many of them were directly involved in the events since 1999, but all of them will be influential in what happens next. Here are some of the key players and their contact details:
Westminster MPs
Alistair Darling: darlinga@parliamanet.uk
Nigel Griffiths: griffithsn@parliament.uk
Mark Lazarowicz (former Edinburgh council leader): lazarowiczm@parliament.uk
Gavin Strang: strangg@parliament.uk
John Barrett: barrettj@parliament.uk
And some likely winners in the Holyrood elections:
Mark Ballard: Mark.Ballard.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Malcolm Chisolm: Malcolm.Chisolm.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Robin Harper: Robin.Harper.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Fiona Hyslop: Fiona.Hyslop.msp@scpttish.parliament.uk
Margo McDonald: Margo.McDonald.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
David McLetchie: David.McLetchie.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Mike Pringle: Mike.Pringle.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Norman Murray (fomer East Lothian council leader): Norman.Murray.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Margaret Smith: Margaret.Smith.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Scotland's capital city and second largest council is now between a rock and a hard place - with Edinburgh very much on the back foot, as the old east west rivalry comes into play.
Why? Because the legal arguments about equal pay are exactly the same at both ends of the M8 - there's nowhere for Edinburgh council to hide, which its highly paid, senior officials know only too well.
Some enterprising Action 4 Equality clients have already been in touch with the former leader of the council - Donald Anderson - to ask why he failed to implement the equal pay (single status)agreement back in 1999, as the employers promised.
What they got was the usual politician's answer. Because although Donald Anderson has stepped down as council leader, he is still fighting the Edinburgh South seat as a potential Labour MSP.
The truth is that there's no good explanation as to why everyone sat on their backsides for so long - other than the honest one. Put simply, the employers and the trade unions had other priorities than looking after low paid women council employees.
The employers and the unions talk a good fight, of course: committed to equal opportunities, against discrimination of any kind, blah blah blah. But when push comes to shove they're not nearly as determined or progressive as they like people to believe.
The truth is that the 1999 equal pay agreement was the subject of painstaking negotiations for years and years. Everyone involved on both the employer and trade union sides of the negotiating table knew precisely what they were signing up to at the time. God knows, the discussions took long enough.
So, don't be taken in by their crocodile tears when they say someone else was to blame or that the poor dears didn't really understand what they were letting themselves in for.
The control and make up of Edinburgh City Council is likely to change after the council elections on 3rd May. The Labour party runs the council at the moment and has done for years. A new coalition is on the cards, but exactly who will lead the new administration is guesswork at this stage.
Edinburgh officials have committed the council to a 1 July 2007 deadline for introducing a new pay and grading structure, which is what the council originally agreed to do back in 1999. The implementation date (for the new pay structure) is much later than most other councils, but it is potentially very significant and may well concentrate minds on how to get the council out of its current equal pay mess.
Why? Because Glasgow used the introduction of a new pay structure (albeit on a different date) as the trigger for reaching a settlement of its outstanding claims.
So, it's doubly important now to hold Edinburgh's politicians to account - before and after the elections - as many of them were directly involved in the events since 1999, but all of them will be influential in what happens next. Here are some of the key players and their contact details:
Westminster MPs
Alistair Darling: darlinga@parliamanet.uk
Nigel Griffiths: griffithsn@parliament.uk
Mark Lazarowicz (former Edinburgh council leader): lazarowiczm@parliament.uk
Gavin Strang: strangg@parliament.uk
John Barrett: barrettj@parliament.uk
And some likely winners in the Holyrood elections:
Mark Ballard: Mark.Ballard.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Malcolm Chisolm: Malcolm.Chisolm.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Robin Harper: Robin.Harper.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Fiona Hyslop: Fiona.Hyslop.msp@scpttish.parliament.uk
Margo McDonald: Margo.McDonald.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
David McLetchie: David.McLetchie.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Mike Pringle: Mike.Pringle.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Norman Murray (fomer East Lothian council leader): Norman.Murray.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Margaret Smith: Margaret.Smith.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
