Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

I've been speaking to some nice people in the Scottish Parliament about my petition to make big union bureaucracies more accountable to individual union members.  The upshot is that I've decided to direct my petition towards the UK Government since the regulation of trade unions is a matter that is reserved to the Westminster Parliament. To get things off the ground I require five other people (who must be UK citizens) to sign the petition before it will go 'live' on the UK Government's web site. Here's the link I've been sent by the Petitions Team at Westminster, so if you are in favour of levelling this terribly uneven playing field, then fire away - and once the petition is 'alive and kicking', so to speak, I can think about how to generate more support.   I’ve made a petition – will you sign it?  Click this link to sign the petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/109616/sponsors/qsOwD0fXxFyALnAwzo My petiti...

A friend of mine on Facebook tells me that someone 'reported' the following post from the blog site which is about 'Baloney and Equal Pay'. Apparently this means that   the Facebook Team have a look at the post (because it appears on Facebook as well as Blogger) and can remove any content they deem to be offensive.  As I haven't heard from anyone at Facebook, I can only conclude that the 'report' was down to some sad internet troll who doesn't have the courage to contact me directly and have their say. So the hunt is on to find the person responsible although the good news is that they have just given me a good reason to republish the post which, as it happens, has proved to be incredibly popular in recent days.  Baloney on Equal Pay (28/09/15) I wonder who Kezia Dugdale is talking about the other day when she proclaimed that 'we' need feminists in positions of power, herself perhaps or other members of the Scottish Labour P...

I listened to Jeremy Corbyn's speech to the annual Labour conference yesterday and came away with the impression that 'Jezza' is a strange cross between Forrest Gump, Elmer Fudd and Elmer Gantry. Now there were things that Jeremy said with which I agreed, for example his call for the UK Government to condemn the threatened beheading of a young Saudi man, Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr, for taking part in political protests against the Saudi Arabian Government. But this is cheap politics, playing to the gallery, rather than a serious stand against the intolerance of religious theocracies in parts of the Islamic world, where human rights and minority rights have little, if any, meaning. Otherwise the Labour leader would have something to say about the role of Iran which issued a 'fatwa' (a call to murder) against the British Indian author Salman Rushdie, or the cold-blooded murder of secular bloggers by Islamist fanatics in Bangladesh, for example. So ...

The Herald reported a decision of the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal (SSDT) the other day which resulted in a solicitor, Christopher Hales, being struck-off and removed from the profession. Now I was a member of the SSDT for 8 years and I know from personal experience that the tribunal deals only with the  serious allegations of professional misconduct, so for someone to be struck-off (the most serious sanction available) the evidence has to be  convincing. The SSDT's decision was given added spice because the solicitor involved acted for the Edinburgh West SNP MP, Michelle Thomson, and her husband who were partners in MF Property Solutions. The Herald highlighted  one of the property deals in which a pensioner with cancer who was desperate to return to England to be with her family sold her home in Stirling to former journalist and business partner of Ms Thomson, Frank Gilbride, for £64,000 in 2010. Yet in what is known as a 'back-to-back' sa...

I wrote the other day about Manual Worker job evaluation scheme (JES) and the significance of the job outline for Home Helps which resulted in a score of 24 points and a high grade of MW5 under the Scotland-wide agreement known as the Green Book. Before going on to consider the position in South Lanarkshire and what was said at the long-running employment tribunal hearing against the Council, I thought it would be helpful to share the scores and grade of two other predominantly male Manual Worker jobs - those of Refuse Collector and Refuse Driver. Now both male jobs scored significantly lower than Home Carers with the Refuse Collector achieving 16 points and MW Grade 2, while the Refuse Driver managed a total of 19 points and MW Grade 4. As I've said before on the blog site, job evaluation isn't rocket science - it's about common sense, fairness and consistency in looking at the skills and responsibilities of different jobs before deciding how these jobs...

The performance of trade unions in topical again as members in South Lanarkshire, for example, question whether their interests have been properly represented by local branch officials. Now I wrote about the phenomenon of 'chum clubs' some time ago and my view is that  all too often union branches and union hierarchies are highly unrepresentative and fail to reflect the much more diverse views of ordinary union members.    So it doesn't surprise me to learn that lots of union activists are rallying behind the campaign to elect Jeremy Corbyn as the next Labour leader, because these activists represent a tiny proportion of the wider union membership. Just like Jeremy these individuals tend to be old-fashioned, left wing  ideologues who treat politics like a form of religion which has unshakeable truths and certainties, as if the world can be broken down into 'them and us' 'goodies and baddies' in which trade unions p...

Here's an extract from the old Manual Worker job evaluation scheme (JES) which remained in place from the 1980s until new pay and JES arrangements were put in place by the Scottish Council employers under the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement. In South Lanarkshire the council management and the trade unions both claimed that they  implemented 'satisfactory' new arrangements in 2004, although as regular readers know the South Lanarkshire JES was subsequently shown to be 'unfit for purpose' following a long-running Employment Tribunal hearing initiated by Action 4 Equality Scotland. Some councils took even longer to introduce new pay and JES arrangements, but that's another story for another day.   The significance of the following extract from the old Green Book (as it was called) JES lies in the reference to true "physical tasks" and "social duties" required of Home Carers back in the late 1980s which demonstrates, conclusively, t...

Wonders will never cease it seems! Because a kind person from South Lanarkshire has sent me a copy of the written witness statement prepared by Stephen Smellie, the local Unison branch secretary, for the long-running employment tribunal hearing against South Lanarkshire Council. Now I haven't had time to study the document as yet, but I imagine it will make very interesting reading and when I get the chance to do so I will share my thoughts on the blog site. In the meantime, here's my own witness statement to the South Lanarkshire employment tribunal from which readers will be able to tell that my evidence was 100% behind the case being made on behalf of the women claimants.    South Lanarkshire Update (19/08/15) I mentioned the long-running employment tribunal hearing involving South Lanarkshire Council recently and the fact that the local Unison branch secretary gave evidence in support of the Council's position. Well I also gave...

I'm still reading the witness statement prepared by the local Unison branch secretary, Stephen Smellie, in connection with the long running Employment Tribunal case against South Lanarkshire Council (SLC), which SLC lost of course.  Since then I've been made aware that Mr Smellie objected strongly to criticism directed at him, as branch secretary, for giving evidence at the tribunal and he tried to explain this away (according to the minutes of the branch council) by saying that he was compelled to attend because the Council served him with a witness order. Now the crucial point for me is not whether Mr Smellie gave evidence to the tribunal hearing, willingly or otherwise, because I gave evidence myself, albeit in a way which supported the claimants to the hilt, many of whom were union members of course. So the crucial point is not whether Mr Smellie gave evidence, but what he had to say - did he know, for example, what he was talking about ...

Here's a post from the blog site archive dating back to 2007 which highlights the big differences in pay between traditional male and female jobs. The key point to note is that these big pay differentials were known to the trade unions all those years ago because the trade unions negotiated and agreed the pay arrangements with South Lanarkshire Council's management. The original aim of the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement was to increase the pay of thousands of low paid women's jobs which both the employers and the trade unions accepted had been undervalued for years. But the approach of the unions and management in South Lanarkshire focussed instead on protecting and preserving the higher pay of traditional male jobs which is why so many women workers lost out when new pay scales and grades were finally implemented in April 2004. Though it's worth pointing out that what happened in South Lanarkshire Council bore no relation to the spirit...

I came across this post from the blog site archive which I had forgotten all about, but it shines a light on the way in which senior officials in North Lanarkshire Council were treated compared to all the 'foot soldiers' fighting for equal pay. Three Steps to Heaven (28/03/12) A kind reader has sent me some information - which explains how big bonuses were handed out to senior officials in North Lanarkshire Council. Apparently the process involved three simple steps - three steps to (financial) heaven if you like - which went as follows.  Step 1 The council's chief executive Gavin Whitefield - is interviewed by the Labour leader of the council (Councillor Jim McCabe) plus two other senior councillors and is rewarded with a bonus of £12,050 - or around 9% of his £136,848 annual salary. Step 2 The council's chief executive - Gavin Whitefield - then interviews the next tier of senior managers whose names are listed below and - surprise, surpr...