Like Men, Only Cheaper

The Times gave a good account yesterday of the ongoing equal pay scandal in South Lanarkshire Council - here's what the paper had to say:  

Town hall and unions ‘connived to underpay women’

A Labour-run local authority has been condemned for failing to implement an equal pay policy after an employment tribunal ruled that thousands of women were systematically underpaid.

The marathon case pitted South Lanarkshire Council against 2,400 people, mostly women, who were employed as cooks, cleaners and care assistants.

To make matters worse for the “old Labour” establishment in west central Scotland, many of the claimants insist that they were misinformed about their rights by local trade union officials, who are alleged to have been in cahoots with the council to cover up the injustice.

Some women are likely to have received up to £10,000 less than men in equivalent roles, with a number of cases dating back ten years. The financial consequences for South Lanarkshire are potentially disastrous, though a complex claims process could mean that individual settlements take years.

Senga O’Donnell, a retired care assistant said that she was delighted with yesterday’s ruling. She had not lodged a claim until 2008 because she had mistakenly thought that Unison, her trade union, had been acting on her behalf.

“Both Unison and South Lanarkshire let the women down,” said Ms O’Donnell, who worked for the council for 24 years. “That was very disappointing. They had made out that they were fair with the wage structure and the grading, but they weren’t. For years we were told, ‘you are not getting anything more, you are entitled to nothing’.”

Agnes Mills, a retired carer, said that, after eight years of argument, the ruling was “absolutely fantastic”. She added: “It always seemed like the union was on the side of the employer. I thought I would be six feet under before we got a result.”

One current council worker who did not want to be identified said that she was downgraded from catering manager to cook-in-charge in 2002 and watched askance as male employees were awarded better deals, with some even picking up bonuses if they worked 15 weeks without absence.

She said: “Janitors had been guaranteed paid overtime, over a lifetime. The women got nothing. The men in the union always seemed to be better off. The women never seemed to be asked to the meetings where these things were decided.”

The tribunal was told that in 1999, South Lanarkshire officials attended a “task force on equal pay” organised by CoSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. While the council acknowledged that women workers had valid equal pay claims, it decided to opt out of a national pay and grading scheme and devised its own Job Evaluation Scheme.

Critics of the scheme said that, as a result, male workers in relatively low-paid jobs, such as roadsweeping, could bring their wages up to £9 or £10 an hour by taking on extra responsibility or by training. By comparison, office cleaners — mostly women — were paid about £7.16 per hour, the lowest grade of pay on offer.

The tribunal found that the scheme did not comply with the Equality Act 2010 or its predecessor. While there were no reasonable grounds to suspect that pay evaluations discriminated on grounds of gender, the process was deeply flawed and unreliable.

“We argued from the beginning that the council’s motivation for going their own way was to protect unlawful and unjustified higher wages of male workers while telling their female workers that there was no equal pay problem,” said Carol Fox, the solicitor representing the claimants. “What has happened in South Lanarkshire is, in the eyes of our clients, truly shameful.

“Our 2,400 clients hope that there will now be a comprehensive inquiry into the decisions of councillors and trade union officials in South Lanarkshire over the last decade. We also hope that the council will change their ways and not appeal further. It is well past time to get round the table and resolve these cases.”

South Lanarkshire Council said that it would take time to evaluate a long and a complex judgment before considering its next course of action. “Crucially, the tribunal did not find our job evaluation scheme to be sex discriminatory,” said a spokesman.

All the more powerful - in my view - for giving a voice to some of the low paid women who are at the heart of this story.