Union Doublespeak

Here's another post from the blog site archive which puts the role of the trade unions in South Lanarkshire Council into proper perspective - as far as the fight for equal pay is concerned.

One thing's for sure though - the penny has finally dropped with ordinary union members.

South Lanarkshire - Union Doublespeak (6 February 2008)

A curious feature of the equal pay cases in South Lanarkshire Council - is that the trade unions are not involved in a single claim to the Employment Tribunals.

Nowhere else in Scotland is this true - in other areas the trade unions tend to have far fewer claims than those brought by Action 4 Equality and Stefan Cross - but at least they're at the races.

In South Lanarkshire all is sweetness and light seemingly - or at least it used to be - until we began to ask the trade unions whether they are in fact fully signed up to the council's local Single Status Agreement and Job Evaluation Scheme which were introduced in 2004.

All of a sudden the unions are singing a different tune - perhaps because they too could be in the frame (along with the council) for agreeing to a something that turns out to be a real 'pig in a poke'.

South Lanarkshire Council says their scheme has trade union support - but intriguingly the unions themselves are now not so sure. The local Unison branch has issued a letter to members that says very specifically: "..., there is no separate Single Status Agreement which was signed in South Lanarkshire".

And this deliberate choice of words from Unison is no coincidence - because it allows a certain amount of wriggle room. So when the shit hits the fan the unions will simply say, in time honoured fashion, that the council is to blame (otherwise known as: 'a big boy did it and ran away!).

So, is the worm now beginning to turn - are the unions now distancing themselves from the council - as the equal pay chickens come home to roost?

Quite possibly - because at a recent South Lanarkshire CMD hearing in Glasgow who turned up? Not just one, but two senior Unison officials - who wanted to sit in and listen to the proceedings. Action for Equality and Stefan Cross certainly had no objections, but incredibly South Lanarkshire did - and so our union colleagues were forced to leave.

But the fact they were there at all speaks volumes - as does the fact they were asked to leave by their erstwhile friends - on the employer's side.