Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

Here's what I said on the blog site back in February about equal pay being a peculiar version of the old 'snakes and ladders' board game, except that the women's jobs all seem to have landed on a snake while the men's jobs all enjoyed much better 'luck'  Funny that. Especially when you consider the fact that this happened in North as well as South Lanarkshire, both large Labour-run councils of course, which are near neighbours sitting on opposite sides of the M74. I wonder if that's a coincidence or if it helps to explain why Scottish Labour is getting such a   terrible kicking in the opinion polls? Anyway, tomorrow is 1st May and the general election is only a week away, so I plan to publish my very own 'manifesto' in 24 hours which will set out my proposals and for carrying out a further re-evaluation of various council jobs in North Lanarkshire. As regular readers know, this has to be done because of concessions made previously ...

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 o...

Here's what I said previously on the blog site about North Lanarkshire's Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) which was supposed to protect the interests of the workforce as the Council introduced new pay arrangements back in 2007. I cannot emphasise strongly enough the importance of carrying out a 'rank order test' at the end of the JES process and before any new pay arrangements are implemented. Because if this had been done, the extraordinary pay differences between traditional male and female jobs would have been apparent to everyone, especially the women workers whose jobs had been underpaid for years and who were promised a new deal under the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement. Now if you ask me this could not possibly have been accidental, since experienced people were involved on both sides and while the whole JES process is important what counts at the end of the day is the outcome and how pay is affected, both individually but also by comparing...

Here's the letter from North Lanarkshire's head of human resources, Iris Wylie, which was only made public after a long battle with the Council and an 'order' to release the document following a decision by the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC). Now if you ask me the intervention of SIC was completely unnecessary, because this kind of information ought to be freely available to anyone who asks for it, especially the workforce in North Lanarkshire whose jobs and livelihoods were being affected by decisions that were being taken behind closed doors. The crux of the issues is that the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) was supposed to ensure that the Council's new pay arrangements were fair, objective and no longer discriminated against predominantly female jobs. But as everyone now knows that is not what happened and the new NLC pay arrangements introduced in 2007 continued to favour traditional male council jobs which is astonish...

As regular readers know I fought a long Freedom of Information (FoI) battle with North Lanarkshire Council (NLC) in order to discover more about the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) which was carried out before the Council finally implemented new pay arrangements in January 2007. Now the Equality Impact Assessment had been demanded by the trade unions and the terms of reference were agreed with the trade unions via the Council's head of human resources, Iris Wylie. The declared purpose of the EIA was , of course, to ensure that all jobs were treated fairly and that the principle of 'equal pay for work of equal value' was at the heart of   the new pay arrangements which flowed from the Council's job evaluation scheme (JES). As everyone now knows, this is not what happened and the new pay arrangements favoured traditional male jobs which is astonishing if you ask me, especially as the simple common sense test of looking at the 'rank order' of jobs would ha...

The Telegraph published a coloured map the other day showing what Britain might look like after next Thursday's general election.   Looks quite pretty if you ask me and that's before the latest opinion poll predicting a Labour wipeout in Scotland which would eliminate even the few red dots you can see within a sea of SNP yellow.

Now here's a passionate, articulate open letter from a young student, Ione Wells, who was brutally attacked as she made her way home one evening. Apparently, the 17-year old man who carried out the assault is due to be sentenced next week, on 6th May, but I take my hat off to Ione for refusing to become just a 'victim' and staying focused on all the good things in her life. A letter to the man who sexually assaulted me You violated the truth that I will never cease to fight for – that there are infinitely more good people in the world than bad By IONE WELLS - The Independent I cannot address this letter to you, because I do not know your name. I only know that you have just been charged with serious sexual assault and prolonged attack of a violent nature. And I have one question . When you were caught on CCTV following me through my own neighbourhood from the Tube, when you waited until I was on my own street to approach me, when you clapped your hand around my f...

The Times reports on what appears to be terrible hypocrisy on the part of Margaret Hodge who has used her position as head of the public accounts committee in the House of Commons to attack tax avoidance. Yet she claims not to have understood the nature of company shares held in the tax haven of Liechtenstein even though she was a major beneficiary. Amazing and yet another example of double standards and political hypocrisy from someone who should know better.  Labour chief given £1.5m shares from tax haven Margaret Hodge has made her name taking on tax avoiders as head of the public accounts committee - Ben Gurr/The Times By Harry Wilson - The Times Labour’s fiercest critic of tax avoidance and “secretive” offshore funds has received more than £1.5 million in shares from the tax haven of Liechtenstein. The money came through a controversial scheme that lets wealthy Britons move undeclared assets back to the UK without facing criminal actio...

I lived and worked in London for much of the 1980s and as a full-time official with NUPE I was aware of Margaret Hodge's role as the Labour leader of Islington Council. So I'm always puzzled that senior figures who go before the Public Accounts Committee don't do more research on Margaret's very mixed track record as a senior public official; instead of standing up for themselves they seem to curl up into the foetal position and meekly accept a good kicking. Which is all good fun and a bit of political theatre, but as Matthew Norman points out in this column for The Independent the Queen of Mean is no great shakes herself.      With a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility In the Eighties Hodge was aware of previous child sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, and did nothing about it By  MATTHEW NORMAN  - The Independent Has there ever been a more spectacular political reinvent...