North Lanarkshire Update

I've written a lot about North Lanarkshire in recent weeks, but here's a brief summary of where things stand as we approach the end of another year in the fight for equal pay.

"Will we win?", people ask me on a regular basis.

Yes, I'm absolutely convinced of that and the reason we will win is that the Council has taken a complete pasting at the ongoing Employment Tribunal which is due to recommence in Glasgow on 19 January 2015.

What has happened is that the Council's defence has been forensically taken apart by the barrister acting for Action 4 Equality Scotland's clients, Daphne Romney QC. Daphne has shown that the Council's claims to have delivered equal pay through it 2007 job evaluation scheme (JES) are complete baloney - from start to finish.

As regular readers know, all that really happened is that the much higher earnings of traditional male jobs were preserved because regardless of their JES scorers, the male jobs were assimilated onto the new pay spine on the basis of their old earnings.

In other words the historical pay discrimination against female dominated jobs was simply rolled forward into the new pay structures which was a very sneaky and naughty thing to do, if you ask me.

To add insult to injury lots of female dominated jobs, such as Home Carers, were 'scored' much lower than they deserved although the Council only admitted this to be the case earlier in 2014 - having had the truth dragged out of them after seven years of denying vehemently that anything was wrong.

Now quite how all of this happened right under the noses of the trade unions is beyond me because it stands to reason that the trade unions must have known how the male workers were being treated, compared to the women.

In any event the Council is now in a giant hole of its own making and while Action 4 Equality Scotland is prepared to reach a negotiated settlement of all outstanding equal pay claims - it will have to be a fair settlement and not one that's on the Council's terms.

At the moment there are no discussion talking place with North Lanarkshire Council and A4ES is preparing for the Employment Tribunal hearing on 19 January 2015 when the Council's head of human resources, Iris Wylie, will be required to give evidence.

In my view, the next couple of months will be crucial because the Council's most senior officials have an awful lot of explaining to do although I am amazed, I have to say, that the same people, by and large, who have made such a mess of equal pay over the past 8 years are still in their very highly paid posts.     

But believe me justice will be done in one way or another, as it was in South Lanarkshire Council, and the looming general election is forcing Labour politicians to sit up and take notice in a way they haven't done for years - because they're all now desperately worried about losing their seats.