NLC Update (05/12/2007)
After months of delay and foot dragging by the council, things are now beginning to hot up in North Lanarkshire - more to follow including news from the Employment Tribunals - but here's a brief summary of events so far.
In February/March 2006, North Lanarkshire tried to persuade its workforce into accepting a new pay and grading structure. Rather oddly, management and trade unions were singing from exactly the same hymn sheet - that is until Action 4 Equality arrived on the scene and explained to people that they were being sold a pig in a poke.
The proposed deal blew up in disarray- as angry North Lanarkshire workers voted the scheme down by an overwhelming majority - after a series of workplace meetings and secret ballot.
In the summer of 2006, council managers announced they would press ahead anyway - by imposing the package over people's heads and despite having lost a vote - that was so vital to their plans just months earlier.
A key part of the package was a new was a new Job Evaluation Scheme (JES) which assessed, ranked and graded all North Lanarkshire Council jobs - but to this day the JES has never been agreed by the workforce or the trade unions.
In November 2006, the council introduced its new pay and grading structure - resulting in several hundred additional unfair dismissal claims (on top of existing equal pay claims) - because the council was imposing a new contract of employment - without the agreement of its employees.
The council then gave each employee details of the new grading structure - but only on a personal and individual basis - crucial information about how other council jobs had fared was deliberately withheld .
Why? Because the management wanted to prevent people from understanding how other jobs (especially the male jobs) had done out of the re-grading exercise - after all the employers and trade unions had been keeping low paid women workers in the dark for years.
In terms of the new JES, the council and the unions were cooking the books (behind the scenes) to protect the interests of the traditional bonus earning - and predominantly male - jobs. Now North Lanarkshire is boasting about the millions of pounds they've saved - compared to other councils - and all because they've got such a cosy relationship with their trade unions.
But now these chickens are coming home to roost - because the new North Lanarkshire grading structure shows that many of the key female dominated jobs have done very badly - surprise, surprise - compared the their male counterparts.
Over the next week or so we will publish some of the more glaring examples of the many women's jobs that have been scored poorly and come out badly - while other male jobs have sailed through the process completely unscathed.
