Crocodile Tears

I have been inundated with e-mails from readers in South Lanarkshire - keen to share with me the delights of the latest Unison branch newsletter.

Thankfully one reader warned me to have a box of hankies at the ready - because it's not exactly light reading I have to say.

If I had the time I would reproduce the contents on the blog site - for others to share.

But I think it's fair to describe the newsletter as a self-serving piece of propaganda - which tries to reinvent history by pretending that the unions in South Lanarkshire have done the right thing all along - over equal pay.

Now my reading of the newsletter is that - surprise, surprise - the trade unions take absolutely no responsibility for what has happened.

Which is that - for the first time ever in Scotland - a major public sector job evaluation scheme has been found 'not to be relied upon' - in terms of the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

In fact I would sum the trade union position up as - 'a big boy did it and ran away' - which is raelly quite pathetic if you ask me.

And of course that doesn't explain why the trade unions did virtually nothing  about the situation for years - refusing to challenge the council in any meaningful way - or share with their members, for example, the huge pay differences between male and female council jobs.

I suspect this kind of nonsense will simply encourage more people to conclude - that the trade unions and the council are effectively on the same side - but I have to say it has seemed that way to me for a very long time.