Foot-Dragging Council

Not surprisingly, there has been lots of interest in my post yesterday about the First Minister and Equal Pay.

So I thought I'd just highlight (from a previous post) what Nicola Sturgeon had to say about the behaviour of 'foot-dragging' council in her remarks at FMQs in the Scottish Parliament.  

Linda Fabiani: 

Does the First Minister agree that local authorities in which the same political party has been in office for years, such as South Lanarkshire Council, have no excuse at all not to have settled equal pay claims on a fair and equitable basis? Does she realise that some of the claims date back for many years and continue to cause stress and strife among hard-working constituents in East Kilbride and elsewhere?

The First Minister: 

Ministers have repeatedly made clear—I do so again unequivocally today—that the delays by councils in settling equal pay claims are completely unacceptable. As Linda Fabiani said, many of the claims go back to 2006—even further, in some cases. There can be absolutely no justification for taking so long to resolve the issue. Some progress has been made recently—for example, the settlement of claims against Fife Council—but much more work needs to be done. Equal pay cases need to be progressed with urgency and commitment so that those who are affected receive their legal entitlements. The Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment has written to all 32 local authorities to reiterate the Government’s desire for more and faster progress, and to seek information on the number of claims that have been settled and the number that are still outstanding for each council.

Now I don't want to put words in the First Minister's mouth, but if you ask me this is Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council down to a tee!

North Lanarkshire was first given the task of sorting out its discriminatory pay arrangements almost two decades ago at the time of the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.

The original deadline for completion of 2002 was then moved to 2004 because Scotland's councils (under the 'dead-hand' leadership of COSLA) could not get their act together.

Action 4 Equality Scotland came along in 2005 and let the cat out of the bag by explaining the huge differences in pay between traditional male and female jobs which resulted in an avalanche of equal pay claims from a disgruntled workforce and angry union members.

North Lanarkshire introduced new local pay arrangements and a new job evaluation scheme (JES) in in 2006/07 which, the Council claimed resolved their equal pay problems.

I begged to differ and said so loud and clearly in my blog site way back December 2007 - posts I'll will shortly re-publish to remind readers about the history and grand scale of this debacle.

A4ES clients challenged the efficacy of North Lanarkshire's new ''equal pay' proofed pay arrangements and in 2012/13, with the help of the estimable Daphne Romney QC,  the Labour-run council's defences finally collapsed at the long running Employment Tribunal in Glasgow.

A partial settlement was reached with NLC which took the majority of claimants up to March 2015, but the Council has still to complete a review of all the grading of various council jobs which was to have been done by the end of December 2015.

In addition, the claims of a number of "First Wave' groups have still to be resolved as have the claims of hundreds of GMB members, just as another major area of dispute with the Council over pensions is about to rear its head.

Perhaps the most amazing issue in this sorry tale is that, broadly speaking, the same group of elected politicians and senior officials have been responsible for overseeing the Council's pay arrangements over these past two decades.

Which is why I think it's perfectly reasonable to call for an independently-led inquiry into North Lanarkshire Council's handling of equal pay, after all this time.