South Lanarkshire Council
Surprisingly, the answer to both questions is: Yes!
South Lanarkshire is our 5th largest council, Labour dominated as most of the big councils are, but with nothing much to suggest that South Lanarkshire is so completely different - unique even - when compared to the rest of Scotland's 28 mainland and 3 island councils.
The first leader of the new council (created in 1996) was no less a figure than Tom McCabe - now finance and local government minister for the Scottish Executive. The current leader is Eddie McAvoy, brother of the local Westminster MP, Tommy McAvoy.
Eddie is a very traditional, some would say old-fashioned local politician with a strong background in the (male dominated) engineering union. Eddie has no great claim to fame other than installing a bust of himself in Rutherglen Town Hall, which he wisely agreed to pay for out of his own pocket, after a press furore about the waste of public funds involved.
But it's on the subject of equal pay that South Lanarkshire gets into X-Files territory. This otherwise unremarkable central belt council is transformed into Scotland's equal pay equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle - where the normal laws of gravity and physics cease to operate - where nothing is quite what it seems, for reasons no one can explain.
South Lanarkshire claims it doesn't have an equal pay problem - because the council says it has already carried out a local job evaluation exercise, endorsed, of course, by the local trade unions and welcomed by every single one of its adoring employees.
Try telling that to well over 1,000 clients of Action 4 Equality and Stefan Cross - none of whom believe in the Tooth Fairy either!
The council says that jobs are now paid in a completely non-discriminatory way. Yet the pay differences between traditional male and female jobs are as great in South Lanarkshire as anywhere else in Scotland.
In South Lanarkshire, a home carer is paid thousands of pounds a year less than a refuse worker - and a nursery nurse is paid thousands a year less than a council tradesman. Yet, comparing like for like, the women's jobs require more skill, training and qualifications - and carry much greater responsibility.
All that South Lanarkshire has done is to end separate bonus payments to the men - but these payments have simply been incorporated into new higher salaries for the male jobs. So, the women's jobs continue to be undervalued and underpaid - in just the same way as other councils.
"Stupid is as stupid does", as Forrest Gump was fond of saying - and this is particularly true when it comes to South Lanarkshire. The council is now desperately trying to conceal the information about what different male and female jobs are really paid - despite the fact that this is information ought to be public knowledge and freely available.
Instead, the council is dragging its feet and deliberately slowing down the employment tribunal process - when it is in every one's best interests to get down to brass tacks. South Lanarkshire is the only council is Scotland not to have offered its staff some form of compensation to settle their equal pay claims.
The truth is that if South Lanarkshire were confident of their case, they would simply publish the information - because this would make or break people's equal pay claims in a matter of seconds.
Either traditional male jobs in the council are paid substantially more - or they're not. If they are, the game is up for the council - but either way the facts should be clear for all to see - so that people can judge with their own eyes.
So, why is South Lanarkshire so frightened to puts its money where its mouth is on such a simple, straightforward question. The answer is that this desperate attempt to conceal the truth - from both the public and their own employees - speaks for itself. The council is running scared.
The trade unions could of course help break the impasse - they could tell their own members what the different male and female jobs are paid - after all the unions (Unison, GMB and TGWU) actually negotiated the new pay arrangements - so they know fine well what has been agreed with the council locally.
But the unions are afraid to come clean - because their women members would quickly realise the extent to which they have been betrayed by their own union reps.
If you would like to share your views on how South Lanarkshire has behaved, you can do so easily by contacting the council leader, Eddie McAvoy, at: Councillor.McAvoy@southlanarkshire.gov.uk
Action 4 Equality intends to make equal pay an issue in the run up to the elections on 3rd May 2007 - and beyond - as the new councils are formed and take up the reins of power. You can help by raising your own council's behaviour with the candidates who will be looking for your votes - make sure you hold them to account over equal pay.
