Spot the Difference

If I were a member of Unite, the union, I would want to ask why my union is running a big, high profile campaign against Ineos - owners of the Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical plant - while the union turns a blind eye to similar behaviour just a few miles down the road in South Lanarkshire.

Now I don't know the details of the cuts that Ineos is proposing to the pay and conditions of its 1300 workers, but I would be surprised if their size and scale is any worse than what has been going on in South Lanarkshire recently - where a similar number of male council workers have seen the equivalent of double digit reduction in their pay - up to 12% in some cases.

In Grangemouth, the employer says that change is necessary to secure the long term future of the plant - and I heard a news report claim that Ineos is prepared to offer a lump sum of £15,000 to 'buy out' the existing terms and conditions of its employees.

Whereas in South Lanarkshire the Council simply gave hundreds of workers (in traditional male jobs- refuse workers, gardeners, janitors and such like) an ultimatum - sing up to the new terms or face the sack by having your existing contract terminated and offered a new one on inferior terms.

So the big question is - 'Why is Unite up in arms in one part of Scotland, but not in another?'

I've read comment pieces in newspapers about the terrible situation facing workers in Grangemouth - but the same commentators have nothing to say about the goings on in South Lanarkshire - where thousands of women council employees have been fighting for equal pay for years.

And now the Council - a Labour-run Council - is trying to make hundreds of hard working male workers pay the price for the mess that senior figures have made of implementing the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.

As I've said before on the blog site, Equal Pay was never about male council workers being paid too much - but about so many women's jobs being paid too little.

And what puzzles me is how trade union leaders like Unite's Len McCluskey come up to Scotland and talk tough about their 'leftwing' political credentials while behaving one way in Grangemouth - but in a completely different way just a few miles away in Hamilton, East Kilbride and Rutherglen.