Trade Unions and Equal Pay
The letter follows recent criticisms by the President of the Law Society for England, Wales and Northern Ireland - see previous post dated 20 April 2010.
Stefan's letter is spot on about the role of the trade unions and this issue is just as relevant in Scotland - as it is elsewhere in the UK.
In Glasgow Action 4 Equality Scotland outnumbers trade union backed claimants by around 7 to 1.
The picture is similar in North Lanarkshire and - as regular readers know only too well - South Lanarkshire Council is an 'equal pay free zone' as far as the unions are concerned.
Ordinary union members stand to benefit from more choice and competition in legal representation - but that's exactly what union bosses are trying to snuff out.
Dear Sir
Unions and Equal Pay
Unlike my old classmate Chris Cox I was delighted with the President’s response to the DBA regulations. At last there was official recognition of the true position of the unions on equal pay and DBA’s.
The unions have been incredibly good at passing motions and attending conferences on equal pay but terrible in taking effective action especially in the public sector. If the President was implying that the unions have failed to do justice to the members employment rights then he was spot on – that is precisely the position.
The RCN itself had until only last year a policy of not pursuing equal pay cases in the NHS. All the public sector unions signed a moratorium with the local government employers agreeing not to pursue equal pay cases on behalf of their members. This position only changed as a direct result of the work that my firm did in pursuing cases on a DBA basis.
Mr Cox claims that the unions have supported hundreds of thousands of cases but the truth is that they would never have supported or pursued these cases if it had not been as a result of our actions using DBA’s.
Until 2003 equal pay cases made up less than 1% of all tribunal claims. As a result of our work equal pay became the number type of claim, a remarkable turnaround that would never have happened if the unions had been left to their own devices.
Ask the union members in Middlesbrough, Newcastle or Glasgow whether the unions got them justice for their employment rights. I have literally thousands of clients who have got substantially more, even after our fees, than their colleagues did through the unions.
As for his claim that almost all advances in equal pay have been through union backed cases this is just nonsense. It complete ignores the role of the EOC and ECHR and the fact is that 9 out of 10 of the reported equal pay cases in the last decade have been cases my firm has pursued and not union cases at all.
The fact is that the unions hate competition and they will do anything to snuff it out. This is why they lobbied government that funding of equal pay settlements would only be provided to councils on the condition that money was not paid to solicitors acting on a DBA basis.
It is why trade union lawyers were the only ones to oppose the ELA response to the DBA regulations. It is why the union firms oppose the ABS in Scotland and oppose the Jackson Civil ligation proposals in England and Wales.
The unions have done some fantastic work for their members but the effective monopoly they seek in claimant work is clearly not in the public interest and not even in their members interests.
Yours faithfully
Stefan Cross
