More Bombshells (23/01/15)
I've read more council reports in my time than I care to remember, but the Corporate Management Team (CMT) report which North Lanarkshire Council tried so hard to keep under wraps is a real 'doozy', as they say.
How about the following extract from Paragraph 3.4:
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"As previously outlined, the job evaluation scheme is designed to change the rank order of jobs within the current hierarchical structures and address equal pay."
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But then my jaw almost dropped to the floor when I read the following statement at Paragraph 4.1:
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"The indicative costs of pay model NLC5C have been updated since the report of 22 May 2005, and now encompass the following:-
- Actual salaries at 1 April 2005 (following the 2.95% pay award and April increments
- A number of allowances were identified which could be added to the basic salaries for employees, as they relate to working arrangements etc, which are included in one or more factors within the job evaluation scheme.
The allowances consolidated were:-
- special schools allowance
- environmental allowance
- frost firing allowance
- dirty money allowance
- cleaner/janitorial duty allowance; and
- bonus
The total of these allowances has been added to the employee's basic salary prior to assimilation to the new proposed grade."
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Now the reason my jaw dropped is that Paragraph 4.1 completely undermines the Council's supposed commitment to equal pay and a landmark national agreement - Scotland's 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.
Because having introduced a new and allegedly non-discriminatory job evaluation scheme (JES) North Lanarkshire Council simply reintroduces the bonus earnings of the much higher paid male dominated jobs - through the back door.
So bonus earnings of up to 80% were simply brought back when jobs were assimilated on to the new pay structure, thereby treating the men much more favourably than their women colleagues.
Which is something North Lanarkshire could never justify and if you ask me, explains why the Council is now so keen to negotiate a settlement of its outstanding equal pay claims.
But I've never seen such a glaring, indefensible stitch-up in my life and it's important to add that the senior and highly paid council officials who were involved in compiling and advising elected councillors to approve this report either knew, or ought to have understood, exactly what they were doing.
If you ask me this amounted to a betrayal of thousands of low paid, predominantly female jobs and if I were in charge of North Lanarkshire Council, a Labour-run council, they would all be shown the door.
No wonder senior people inside the Council didn't want this information coming out into the open which is, of course, where it belongs.
