Strange Priorities

The TUC released a report the other day which said that 4.82 million workers in the UK are paid less than the 'so-called' living wage of £7.20 and hour - or £8.30 an hour in London.

Now that comes as no real surprise to me because the problem of low pay has been around for a very long time - and was the main reason for employers and trade unions in local government striking a landmark UK Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement in 1997 - which came into effect in 1999 in Scotland.

The clear intention behind the Single Status Agreement was the need to tackle  widespread discrimination against many female dominated jobs - carers, catering workers, cleaners and classroom assistants - which had been underpaid and undervalued for many years.

The Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement took years to negotiate but even then were never implemented properly despite the relative times of plenty that followed over the next decade - as council budgets increased enormously and even doubled in size in Scotland, for example.

So why was equal pay not given the priority it deserved?

Frances O'Grady - the new woman leader of the TUC - is urging more employers to pay a living wage  which is good to hear - but there should also be some searching questions asked about the attitudes of the big three public sector trade unions - GMB, Unison and Unite.

Because while we've seen national campaigns and even strike action to defend final salary pension schemes (which discriminate in favour of higher  paid workers) - the reality is that we've seen nothing comparable from the trade unions - when it comes to defending the interests of those at the bottom of the pay ladder.

Here's a previous post in the subject from 4 October 2012.

Deepest Pink (4 October 2012)

Today is National Poetry Day apparently which has the admirable aim of encouraging people to take a greater interest in the power of words - what they stand for and how they can inspire.

So in keeping with the spirit of the day I thought I'd share a couple of lines from an alternative version of the Labour Party's battle cry - The Red Flag - which will be sung at the end of today's party conference in Manchester:

The Red Flag

The people's flag is deepest pink

It's not as red as you might think

Now my reason for believing that Labour is not as 'red' as people might think - stems from its terrible track record on equal pay.

Because in 1999 Scotland signed up to a groundbreaking Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement - which promised a new deal for thousands of low paid workers (mainly but not exclusively women) - whose jobs had been underpaid and undervalued for years.

At the time the 'new deal' was supposed to be introduced - traditional male jobs (e.g refuse workers and gardeners) were paid around £9.00 an hour - whereas comparative female jobs which often required much greater skill and responsibility (e.g home carers and classroom assistants) - were being paid around £6.00 an hour or so.

In other words the traditional male jobs were being paid half as much again - or 50% more than the female jobs - which for a full-time worker meant a difference of thousands of pounds a year - £5,000 or £6,000 a year.

And this was at a time when council budgets in Scotland were doubling in size - over a ten year period from 1997 to 2007 they all increased by 100% - in Glasgow, Fife, Edinburgh, North and South Lanarkshire - so money and resources were never the problem.

Nor was the problem down to New Labour or some London based elite - the reason that equal pay never became a reality was that the big Labour councils in Scotland decided they had other priorities - and the Labour supporting trade unions (GMB, Unite and Unison) failed to stand up for their lowest paid members.

Labour now says it is in favour of a so-called 'Living Wage' - which is currently pitched at £7.20 an hour or thereabouts.

Yet the irony is that if Labour and the trade unions had stood up for an Equal Pay Agreement they signed back in 1999 - low paid workers in Scotland would have been earning much more than £7.20 years ago - £9.00 an hour or so in many cases.

The aim of the 1999 Equal Pay Agreement was always to level people's pay up - not level pay down - and the cost would have been a reorganisation of the workforce with perhaps fewer but much better paid council workers.

But instead of moving might and main to achieve Equal Pay - my abiding memory of the past 10 years is the sight of Labour supporting trade unions fighting to defend 'final salary' pension schemes - which benefit the highest paid officials within the local government workforce.

So that is why the people's flag is deepest pink - and why the Living Wage is a such a miserable, watered down, half-hearted policy.

Because it is a symbol of Labour employers and Labour supporting trade unions saying one thing then doing another - and all at the expense of some of the lowest paid council workers in the land.