Calling Glasgow

The long-running dispute over Glasgow City Council's Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR) - is about to take centre stage again.

As regular readers know, Glasgow City Council brought in the WPBR in great haste - after initially denying that Scotland's largest council had any problem with equal pay.

Now as things turned out this was complete nonsense - of course.

Because Glasgow had been turning a blind eye to widespread pay discrimination for years - against low paid, predominantly female jobs - which is what Action 4 Equality Scotland drew to people's attention back in 2005. 

Since then Glasgow has reached a partial - but only partial - settlement of people's equal pay claims.

But the council is now arguing that from 1 January 2007 onwards - i.e. the point at which the WPBR was introduced - all of its pay arrangements have been just fine, tickety boo in fact.

The problem is that not everyone agrees with that assessment - me for one - and another 5,500 employees  who continue to pursue equal pay claims against Glasgow City Council.

What would help Action 4 Equality Scotland is information - the kind of information that some of our 5,500 clients in Glasgow can help to provide.

For example, back in the early days of the Glasgow equal pay campaign - some male workers came forward to explain how the bonus payments worked.

In one case that springs to mind - the person in question was the husband of one of the many  Home Carers in Glasgow - who were all fighting for equal pay at the time.

Now this chap worked in a traditional male job - the kind of job that attracted a big bonus payment every week - unlike the job done by his wife.

Which both he and she thought was terribly unfair - and rightly so.

Mr X - as I shall call him - provided very useful information on how the bonus schemes operated - which helped Action 4 Equality Scotland make mincemeat of the council's alleged defence in court.

So what I'm looking for is a few people who can help this time around as well - to have a look at how traditional male jobs have fared and been treated under the WPBR.

The person might be still working for Glasgow City Council in one of these jobs - or might even have left or retired - since the WPBR came into play on 1 January 2007. 

In any event being able to speak to someone who fits this description - in complete confidence of course - would potentially be a big help in all the equal pay claims that are still underway.

So what I'm asking readers in Glasgow to do is to get their thinking caps on - the kind of person I'm looking for might be your 'better half' - maybe a relative, friend or neighbour.

In any event if think you can help, drop me a note at: markirvine@compuserve.com