Classroom Assistants
I've had a number of enquiries from Classroom Assistants in North Lanarkshire who want to know if they have the same potential claim for equal pay as other groups of workers.
And so I thought I'd publish this old post from the blog site archive which explains things in some detail, the answer to the question being - Yes.
If there is a pay gap - it can only be justified by reference to the skills and responsibilities of the jobs that are being compared.
So Classroom Assistants just like Clerical Workers (school based and non-school based) all have the same argument about equal pay for work of equal value - if their jobs are paid less than traditional male council jobs like refuse workers and gardeners.
The phone number in the archive post is no longer in use by the way, so here are the current contact details for A4ES.
Contact Action 4 Equality Scotland:
Phone: 0131 652 7366
Email: enquiries@action4equality.co.uk
Classroom Assistants (2 February 2008)
A group of Classroom Assistants from Clackmannanshire have been in touch to ask - Do we have a valid equal pay claim against our council?
The answer is absolutely - YES - without a moment's doubt or hesitation.
Because equal pay has nothing to do with being a manual worker - all kinds of council employees have perfectly good claims - although the employers and trade unions are not keen to tell people so - since the next obvious question would be - Why haven't we been told before now?
Equal pay is about differences in pay between groups of male and female workers - no matter what jobs they do - employed by the same employer.
If there is a pay gap - it can only be justified by reference to the skills and responsibilities of the jobs that are being compared.
In other words, the higher pay of the male job is only justified if the male job can be shown to exercise more skill and responsibility than the female job.
But when you look at what the employers (and the trade unions) have been doing for years - they have been ensuring that traditional male jobs continue to do much better than their female colleagues.
Who in their right mind would try to argue that a Classroom Assistant does not deserve at least the same pay as a refuse worker, gardener or gravedigger? See the recent post dated 9 January 2008 regarding comparable rates of pay in Falkirk Council.
So, the bottom line is that Classroom Assistants and many other female dominated jobs - Office and Admin Staff, for example - have just as strong a case as anyone else.
If you want more information or an application form, please contact Mark Irvine :markirvine@compuserve.com
