Nice Bomb Pattern

I read Joseph Heller's iconic novel 'Catch-22' when I was young and I'm pleased to say that the book has made a lasting impression - for example, it's helped me develop an excellent radar for detecting 'bullshit'.

So when I hear something that sounds weird and complacent at the same time - I always think of Yossarian, a bomber pilot from Catch-22, and his struggles with military bosses - who cared not a jot about what his bombing missions were achieving, if anything.

All they cared about was whether his payload created an impressive pattern when they finally hit the ground - a nice bomb pattern - so that the pictures of the devastation looked 'good' from the air.  

For some reason this thought jumped into my head when I read the following news release from the EHRC in Scotland - which seems completely pointless to me because people have known about job segregation in the public sector for years and years.

The point is not to describe the problem - yet again for the umpteenth time - but to do something about the fact that it is mainly women workers who are concentrated in these lower paid public sector  jobs. 

Go to Spain or Germany or America and you will see lost of women wearing hard hats - working on building sites on on road repairs - but in the UK a woman doing these kind of jobs is about as rare as hen's teeth.

The same is true about refuse collection, for example, which is not a heavy job these days with 'wheelie bin' collections - but the very same argument applies.  

I can't remember the EHRC getting involved in any of the big equal pay battles over the past 8 years, so it does make me stop and think - what exactly is the EHRC for?          

Equality-how does Scotland's public sector 'measure up?'

A new report by the EHRC in Scotland shows that the public sector is largely meeting the first stage of their equality duties.

The report, ‘Measuring Up?’ shows that the majority of Scottish authorities have succeeded in publishing equality outcomes and information on equal pay and occupational segregation, as required by the Scottish specific duties, brought in under the Equality Act 2010.

The Scottish Government introduced these powerful equality duties in 2012 to ensure that public authorities tackle the most pressing inequalities, and to help them have a better understanding of their service users and work force, meaning better decision-making and tangible outcomes.

The report shows:

• Two hundred and fifty nine public authorities were required to publish mainstreaming equality information by 30th April 2013, including equality outcomes and employee information. Where they had a workforce of over 150, equal pay statements and gender pay gap analysis were also required.

• As of 10 June 2013, 4 in 5 public authorities complied in the first instance.

• In this initial analysis, all of the major public bodies - Local Authorities, the Police, NHS and Further & Higher Education institutions - have published.

• 17% published late, published in draft form, or did not publish the full set of information required

• Only 9 public authorities failed completely to publish anything. The Commission’s legal team will be taking this further.

This information will provide the baselines from which the equality performance of all of the Scottish public sector will be judged in the future.

However, the Commission have cautioned that this is just the initial stage of assessment, and considers the most basic form of ‘compliance’ with the duties, that of publication. Further analysis will be carried out in the second stage of the Commission’s monitoring work which will be published in the summer and autumn of 2013.

Alastair Pringle, Scotland Director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said:

"While the number of public bodies who have published the required information is very encouraging, this is just the first stage of analysis. We will be carrying out further qualitative analysis of this information and the statistical evidence they contain. For instance, a local authority may have published on time, and may have a reasonable quality of reporting, but their data may show, for example, unacceptable differences in pay between men and women doing the same types of work. Public bodies must now use the information they have published to improve their performance.

‘If Scotland is to successfully emerge from the current recession we need to harness the talents of all of our citizens. Being excluded from the workforce because you are older or disabled, or being paid less simply because you are a woman, doesn't just harm individuals, it harms our society and economy. The public sector has a major role to play in dismantling discrimination and we are pleased that they have made such an encouraging start.’