North Lanarkshire Update

Lots of readers from North Lanarkshire have been in touch over the ongoing situation involving equal pay and the GMB union.

The key point is that Action 4 Equality Scotland has been challenging North Lanarkshire's job evaluation scheme (JES) since 2007 when it was first introduced.

Which explains why A4ES clients are receiving settlements that cover the whole period from January 2007 to the end of March 2015.  

For some reason the GMB alone appears to have restricted its claims to the three year protection period referred to in the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.

So if the GMB now wishes to adopt the same arguments that A4ES has been making all these years, my understanding is that the whole process will have to start all over again.

Add to that the fact that lots of GMB members will almost certainly have left the Council's employment in the past 7 or 8 years which means that these peoples' claims may well be out of time now, if entirely new legal pleadings have to be re-submitted to the Employment Tribunals.

In other words the whole business looks to be a terrible mess which is why I said the other day that the GMB ought to do the right thing by saying that it will compensate any member who stands to lose out financially.

Because there's absolutely no guarantee that the Employment Tribunal would allow the GMB to amend its legal pleadings after all this time, whether or not any new pleadings would be successful and how long this would all take.