NLC Feedback
I was at another really good equal pay meeting in Coatbridge last night which was attended mainly by former APT&C workers - classroom assistants and clerical staff - who had lots to contribute to the discussion.
The unions had been invited to come long, but were a 'no show' but a local councillor did come along and had a good contribution to make - here are some of the points that were covered on the night:
MSPs and MPs
A mixed bag of responses so far, with most of North Lanarkshire's Labour politicians giving people the impression that they'd rather not get involved, perhaps because the Council is a Labour Council. Everyone agreed this was no way to behave and that the politicians should look at the facts, without fear or favour, and stand up for the interests of their local constituents.
Employment Tribunal
A separate Equal Value tribunal hearing for former APT&C workers is due to get underway in June, but the ongoing '2nd wave' tribunal hearing has already unearthed major concerns about the Council's job evaluation scheme (JES) and the arrangements for assimilating different groups of workers onto the Council's new pay scales.
The Council has been forced to concede that key jobs (e.g. Home Support Workers) had been incorrectly graded and that former bonus earnings had been used to assimilate traditional male jobs onto the new pay scales. In other words historical pay differences between male and female jobs seem to have been preserved.
Job Evaluation Scheme
The meeting heard that the trade unions were considering further changes to the Council's
JES which would result in a ballot of members at some point in the future. But no one could understand this 'tinkering around' with the JES should be any kind of priority when North Lanarkshire had not even begun to address the enormous problems with the JES identified at the Employment Tribunal.
The unions have history on the subject, of course, and got their fingers badly burned when they tried to sell the original JES to the workforce, along with the Council management, but in a subsequent ballot a big majority of members voted the proposals down.
Senior Managers
People were amazed to learn that the Council had finally been forced to admit that key jobs such as Home Support Workers had been incorrectly graded under North Lanarkshire's job evaluation scheme (JES), after years of denying that there was anything wrong at all.
Even more amazing was the revelation that the Council put this down to a 'mistake' as opposed to a deliberate policy of manipulating the process in order to produce a desired outcome. What folks wanted to know is who was being held to account for the mess - which of the Council's senior managers (who have received substantial performance bonuses in recent years) is going to take responsibility for what has happened?
