Glasgow City Council Update
I said in a recent post (see 31/03/16 below) that the comments of the local Unison branch in Glasgow were very similar to those of the local Unison branch in South Lanarkshire back in 2012, after a very big and favourable decision at the Employment Tribunals.
Now I don't know the chap in Glasgow, Sam McCartney, perhaps he was just caught 'on the hop' and said the wrong thing instead of welcoming the decision of the EAT and calling for Glasgow City Council to get round the negotiating table to settle these equal pay claims.
As I said at the time the SNP opposition leader in Glasgow City Council, Cllr Susan Aitken, has said that the Council should "come clean" and settle these cases, so it's strange to see local trade union representative taking a much softer line and trying to pour cold water on a major development for thousands of low paid workers in Glasgow.
Since writing the recent Glasgow Update I've come across a few more posts from the blog site archive which detail just how badly Unison in South Lanarkshire let its members down during the long fight with the Labour-run council over equal pay.
Resign! (26/09/15)
While the top brass at Volkswagen Motors have been forced to resign following a public scandal over emission tests, local union officials in South Lanarkshire Council seem to operate to a different set of standards.
As regular readers know, the unions in South Lanarkshire Council actively discouraged their members from pursuing equal pay claims against the Labour-run Council and the end result is that many of the lowest paid union members have lost out financially by following their unions' advice.
Now you would have thought that the local union officials who presided over this awful mess would have done the decent thing and apologised publicly by now, before falling on their own swords.
But it appears that most of the key players are still in place which is quite remarkable if you ask me, although how long this can last is another question, especially after the news that the boss of GMB Scotland, Harry Donaldson, is no longer at his desk, so to speak.
SLC and Equal Pay (17/06/14)
Readers in South Lanarkshire are still in touch in a regular basis and tell me that the local trade unions, Unison in particular, are mounting a desperate 'damage limitation' exercise on the question of equal pay.
Apparently, the unions are now inviting their members to raise new equal pay claims against the Council having shown little real interest in the subject, of course, over the past 10 years.
Now if you ask me, this seems like a pretty cynical business and I'm sure the unions are not explaining to their members that they were effectively on the Council's side for years, happy to pour cold water on the prospects of winning the fight and even going as far as actively discouraging their members from pursuing a claim.
The problem now is that any further cases raised at this very late stage will be that much harder to win because the Council has made changes to the job evaluation scheme and also to the way in which some of the traditional male jobs are paid.
On top of that any cases that are successful will be worth much less than those taken up much earlier, as far back as 2005/06, by Action 4 Equality Scotland.
So if I were a union member in South Lanarkshire, I'd be doing my best to get the local union leaders to resign because there is no doubt in my mind that these people have let the workforce down - and maybe the way to start putting things right is to begin with a heartfelt and humble apology.
