Equal Pay
Here's a recent exchange of e-mails with a new reader - a former union member who is happy to share her personal experience - of how the trade unions behaved over equal pay.
Far from being lazy - my view is that the vast majority of union members did not realise that they were being treated like useful idiots.
Good for raising union contributions - and for passing money on to the Labour party - but starved of information and expendable when push came to shove.
Because if this were not the case the trade unions would have been challenging the big Labour councils long ago - in the courts and elsewhere - over equal pay and their failure to implement the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.
And if the big Labour councils - and COSLA - had done what they promised back in 1999 - Action 4 Equality Scotland would have no pupose - and no reason to exist.
Hi Mark
Equal Pay I came across your blog while researching about equal pay.
Please don't condemn all of us who haven't claimed as being lazy. At our school we had no idea that each individual had to claim or that we were even entitled to claim. Some of us earn so little that we can't even afford to pay for the union each month and our union members don't seem to have a local rep either.
One of my colleagues, who is a member of the union, thinks she is being used as a test case by the union and presumed she was a representative for all people in a similar job. I think she is the only low paid worker claiming in the whole building. We didn't understand how we could be compared to bin men or men in other jobs and didn't really expect to ever hear about extra money. It just doesn't happen to people like us and if your blog is correct about no more claiming, it looks like it is not going to benefit most of us again. If we have lost out on this claim, it is through ignorance of what we were supposed to do.
Personally I never expected to benefit from any legal action and had no idea that I ever could. I left the union when Gordon Brown took away the 10% tax rate and nobody in the union asked me why. My pay dropped by £10 per month and the only saving I could make was to leave the union. I don't see any reason to consider joining again given the lack of clear help in this case.
Yours sincerely
I*****
Dear I*****
Equal Pay
I would never describe people who have not registered an equal pay claim as being lazy - not least because the trade unions are the real villains of the piece - having deliberately kept their members in the dark about equal pay for many years.
When Action 4 Equality Scotland came along in 2005 things finally began to change - because we explained to low paid workers, like yourself, the huge and unjustified pay gap between traditional male and female jobs - but even then the trade unions sided with the employers.
In many cases the unions actively discouraged members from protecting their interests by registering an equal pay claim with the Employment Tribunals - and in some areas the trade unions also actively encouraged people to accept settlement offers that were worth much less - than the true value of their claims.
So in essence I think the unions have a lot to answer for - and that their behaviour is a complete disgrace.
I can understand the reasons why you left your trade union after the Gordon Brown 10p tax fiasco. Because instead of standing up and condemning the abolition of the 10p tax rate as an attack on the low paid - the Labour supporting trade unions kept quiet and agreed not to rock the boat.Yet they are quick to take your money and for members to pay a political levy to the Labour party.
The bottom line is that if people at your workplace have lost out, then you may still be able to hold your trade union to account - if it has failed to advise and represent you properly.
Kind regards
Mark
