North Lanarkshire Update

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.

North Lanarkshire Update (11/02/15)

I promised to say more about North Lanarkshire Council's Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) and the letter from Iris Wylie to Unison setting out the EIA's terms of reference.

Now the purpose of an EIA is very simple - it's a device for ensuring that the way in which a job evaluation scheme (JES) and new pay arrangements are being implemented is both fair and non-discriminatory, i.e. that some groups are not being treated more favourably, or less favourably, than others.

The 'killer' part of the EIA comes in the fifth bullet point which are not numbered, so I reproduce what this part of the letter has to say below, in full:

• identify predominantly male or predominantly female jobs in the existing grading structure and confirm how they move within the new evaluated rank order of jobs i.e. upwards or downwards

What this represents is a commitment from both sides, i.e. the Council and trade unions to check on the 'rank order' of jobs and where they sit in the pay hierarchy -  before and the JES and new pay arrangements are implemented.

As someone who has been involved in JES and pay negotiations for over thirty years, I would say that it's the single most important check anyone can carry out because any problems or 'odd' results stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Yet even though this commitment was set out in black and white within the EIA's terms of reference I have not seen any report, document or letter (from the Council or the unions) making the very obvious point that the traditional male jobs were all retaining their old earnings.

As readers know from previous posts this was done by incorporating the old bonus earnings into new and higher basic salaries, but what this did into the bargain was to maintain the big differences in pay between male and female jobs.

Now that's a question for senior officials in NLC to answer although I'd be very interested to hear what the unions have to say as well.