North Lanarkshire Update
A reader from North Lanarkshire dropped me a note to ask who is carrying out the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) in connection with the Council's late-running job evaluation (JE) exercise.
Is it this chap Ian Brewster who has apparently been working as an independent adviser to the project steering group since last year, by any chance?
Now I don't know, I have to admit and while I mentioned Ian Brewster in a blog post in May 2015 I haven't heard a thing since.
But I can't see how Mr Brewster could then carry out an Equality Impact Assessment because that wouldn't be remotely independent.
In fact, it would be like marking your own homework.
NLC Update (17/05/15)
The workforce in North Lanarkshire will be interested to learn that the re-evaluation of various council jobs appears to be underway already. Apparently information packs and questionnaires have been sent out to selected employees and a 'joint team' has been appointed to oversee the process. As yet, I don't know who is on the 'joint team' but I am told that this is made up of union reps nominated by the GMB, Unison and Unite along with officials from the Council. In addition an independent expert has been appointed, a chap named Ian Brewster, although there is no indication as to whether to not an Equality Impact Assessment will be carried out which the trade unions demanded last time round, of course. Now it's early days yet, but this whole process doesn't look terribly transparent to me and I set out my own views of what an open and transparent should look like which is detailed below in a previous post to the blog site. So if I were a union member in North Lanarkshire, I would certainly start asking some questions about the process because I get the distinct impression that the people in charge are intent on doing most of the work involved behind closed doors. And we all know that didn't work out too well last time. |