Scottish Parliament - Evidence (2)
1999 Onwards
10) Having adopted its own Single Status Agreement in 1999, the trade unions and council employers had committed themselves to a timetable of 3 years for introducing a completely new and non-discriminatory Job Evaluation scheme.
11) The proposed vehicle for this task (Gauge) was a bespoke JE scheme, one chosen deliberately and only after the employers spent £250,000 of public money road testing the scheme to ensure it was fit for purpose. All 32 Scottish councils supported the Red Book national agreement and development of the Gauge JE scheme – with larger councils paying more on a per capita (employee) basis.
12) The Gauge scheme was based on clear, transparent principles and agreed to adopt the Code of Good Practice from the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), as well as rigorous statistical techniques for analysing and assessing pay outcomes – i.e. the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pay outcomes in terms of key male and female job groups.
13) For reasons only the employers’ can explain, councils began dragging their feet – the original 2002 deadline came and went, only to be replaced by a 2 year extension until 2004. By then the original agreement had been allowed to drift and there was no sign of either the trade unions or the local authority employers having the political will to tackle the widespread pay discrimination – which they had both promised to sweep away in 1999.
14) In August 2005, Action 4 Equality Scotland and Stefan Cross Solicitors began to explain the size of the pay gap and the right of women workers to pursue an equal pay claim under the law. At first, councils insisted that they had no equal pay issues, but that changed very quickly as one council after another tried to ‘buy-out’ the equal pay claims of their female employees with one-off cash sums. The employers refused to explain the basis of their offers, but often they were worth less than 50% of the real value of people’s claims. Around this time, COSLA issued a National Framework Agreement under Scottish Joint Council SJC/22 which recognised there were ‘many valid equal pay claims in the workforce’.
15) The behaviour of the Scottish employers, individually and collectively, should be considered in the context of a period of substantial funding growth - council budgets effectively doubled over the 10 years up to 2007/08. Yet no effective planning had taken place on how to deliver upon the historic commitment to equal pay in 1999.
Part 3 to follow
10) Having adopted its own Single Status Agreement in 1999, the trade unions and council employers had committed themselves to a timetable of 3 years for introducing a completely new and non-discriminatory Job Evaluation scheme.
11) The proposed vehicle for this task (Gauge) was a bespoke JE scheme, one chosen deliberately and only after the employers spent £250,000 of public money road testing the scheme to ensure it was fit for purpose. All 32 Scottish councils supported the Red Book national agreement and development of the Gauge JE scheme – with larger councils paying more on a per capita (employee) basis.
12) The Gauge scheme was based on clear, transparent principles and agreed to adopt the Code of Good Practice from the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), as well as rigorous statistical techniques for analysing and assessing pay outcomes – i.e. the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pay outcomes in terms of key male and female job groups.
13) For reasons only the employers’ can explain, councils began dragging their feet – the original 2002 deadline came and went, only to be replaced by a 2 year extension until 2004. By then the original agreement had been allowed to drift and there was no sign of either the trade unions or the local authority employers having the political will to tackle the widespread pay discrimination – which they had both promised to sweep away in 1999.
14) In August 2005, Action 4 Equality Scotland and Stefan Cross Solicitors began to explain the size of the pay gap and the right of women workers to pursue an equal pay claim under the law. At first, councils insisted that they had no equal pay issues, but that changed very quickly as one council after another tried to ‘buy-out’ the equal pay claims of their female employees with one-off cash sums. The employers refused to explain the basis of their offers, but often they were worth less than 50% of the real value of people’s claims. Around this time, COSLA issued a National Framework Agreement under Scottish Joint Council SJC/22 which recognised there were ‘many valid equal pay claims in the workforce’.
15) The behaviour of the Scottish employers, individually and collectively, should be considered in the context of a period of substantial funding growth - council budgets effectively doubled over the 10 years up to 2007/08. Yet no effective planning had taken place on how to deliver upon the historic commitment to equal pay in 1999.
Part 3 to follow
