NLC Update (29/04/15)

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 the pay of one job against others.

For example, if the pay of a hospital cleaner ended up being more than an experienced NHS consultant, it would be immediately obvious to everyone that something had gone badly wrong or that the process was being deliberately manipulated to achieve a particular outcome.

So how did North Lanarkshire end up with so many female dominated jobs still stuck at the bottom of the pay ladder, far behind their male colleagues, and why did the trade unions (who demanded the EIA in the first place) allow this to happen?   

I suggested yesterday that people should ask themselves what's to stop the same thing from happening all over again and I shall have more to say about this in the days ahead.