Elections and Equal Pay (03/05/16)
I have been doing some research on the Scottish Parliament elections and came across this fascinating entry from the Labour Party web site regarding its candidate for the seat of East Kilbride, part of the South Lanarkshire Council area.
Now I presume this has to be the same LizAnne Handibode who featured in a post to the blog site back in May 2015 and the same LizAnne Handibode who was an activist in the South Lanarkshire Union branch back in June 2008 - see post below from 5 May 2015 entitled 'South Lanarkshire Update'.
So while LizAnne Handibode may well have been a 'Labour and Trade Union activist for many years' she also appears to have been an influential figure at the time when the local Union branch was actively discouraging its own members from pursuing equal pay claims against the local Labour-run Council.
East Kilbride
LizAnne Handibode
LizAnne Handibode is employed as a Team Leader in a Local Authority Consumer and Trading Standards Service. A graduate of Glasgow Caledonian and Glasgow Universities, she has been a Labour and Trade Union activist for many years. LizAnne's voluntary work focuses on working with charities and organisations assisting Armed Forces Veterans and their families, plus fundraising for various charities.
- See more at: http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/blog/entry/candidates-for 2016#sthash.mZ0JPzEU.dpuf
Union Advice (05/04/14)
A reader from South Lanarkshire contacted me to say that the local Unison branch has sent round an email telling people that they have to contact the union's Glasgow office, if they wish to pursue an equal pay claim.
Now this doesn't surprise me, I have to say.
Because this is the same local Unison branch that was telling its members that equal pay had been sorted years ago and that there was no point in people pursuing equal pay claims against South Lanarkshire Council.
But how silly and ridiculous does that advice look now?
If you ask me the union branch officials in South Lanarkshire should all resign, if they had any integrity, and accept responsibility for the way things has been handled.
Because even if union members are now able to raise an equal pay claim, any claim will be worth an awful lot less than one registered back in 2005/06 when Action 4 Equality Scotland arrived on the scene and started to explain the big pay gap between traditional male and female jobs - which had been negotiated and agreed with the trade unions, of course.
