South Lanarkshire

A kind reader has passed on a copy of a branch newsletter from Unison in South Lanarkshire - which makes for quite extraordinary reading, as people can read for themselves below.

Pay protection

Since South Lanarkshire Council began,  there have been lots of changes in the delivery of services and the terms and conditions of workers to achieve efficiencies and savings. All unions involved have fought to ensure that as well as improving services the terms and conditions of the workers were protected - this included their earnings.

At the time of local government reorganisation, the employers and the Tory Government refused to continue the long established practice protecting earnings when jobs changed or posts were re-graded. South Lanarkshire adopted the 3-year protection rule. As a result of negotiations with the unions, the Council agreed to seek ways to protect earnings in the longer term through "job re-design" with workers taking on additional tasks. The benefitted (sic) the worker and also the Council through improved service delivery. Over the years other ways developed to protect earnings through working additional hours and re-deployment to other posts.

However recent workforce audit showed that a good number of men and women had previously had their earnings protected without getting additional duties or hours - so they were getting paid at their original level but working in jobs that no longer justified that level of earnings.

Over the recent months, discussions have been taking place with these individuals to address this. UNISON has been supporting members through this process, and is also seeking reviews of services to ensure that current jobs are properly graded in the first place. These are difficult discussions and members should ensure that they seek advice from UNISON. The aim, as always, is to protect members' levels of pay.   

Now this is a spectacularly ill-informed piece of writing because the 3-year protection arrangements were part of the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement in Scotland - and had nothing whatsoever to do with local government reorganisation which took place years earlier in 1996.  

Nor had it anything to do with a Tory Government of course since Labour came to power in 1997 courtesy of a landslide victory under Tony Blair - so who exactly writes this stuff, I have to ask.

In any event the main purpose of the 1999 Single Status Agreement was to address the position of the many thousands of predominantly female jobs - carers, cooks, cleaners, clerical workers, classroom assistants, nursery staff and so on - whose jobs had been undervalued and underpaid for years.

In other words, the priority was closing the big pay gap between male and female jobs - which stood anywhere between £3 to £5 - by increasing the pay of the women workers over time which was perfectly possible since the budgets of local councils in Scotland virtually doubled over the ten years from 1997 to 2007.

A decade of Labour dominance of course - not just in South Lanarkshire Council but in the Scottish and Westminster Parliaments as well.