Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

Lots of readers have been in touch to ask about the 'next steps' in the fight for equal pay with Glasgow City Council which was given a huge boost with yesterday's victory in the Court of Session. The City Council is now under new management following the local elections on 4 May 2017 and the new council leader, Cllr Susan Aitken, has already stated publicly that there will be no further appeals.  So, presumably the City Council has finally realised that it's in a big hole and the first thing to do is to 'stop digging'. Next Steps The Court of Session appeal hearings in Edinburgh considered two main issues: the pay protection arrangements put in place by Glasgow City Council (GCC) following the  introduction of its WPBR pay scheme in 2006/07 the job evaluation (JE) side of the WPBR and its component parts - Core Pay, WCD and NSWP - which has been challenged by A4ES The judgment of the court on 'pay protection' has gone in favour of ...

Keep up with all the equal pay news in Glasgow by following me on Facebook and Twitter -    All you need is a mobile phone!        Glasgow and Equal Pay (25/05/17) I received an email the other day from a reader in Glasgow asking if I could send out updates by post, for the benefit of people who don't have access to the internet.  Here's what I said in reply: Hi Ann I update my blog site several times a week, as you probably know, so it's really not possible for me to produce separate briefings for individuals or small groups - I just don't have the time. I also do put all the equal pay blog posts on Twitter and Facebook. So anyone with a mobile phone (which is just about everyone these days) can follow me on Twitter or Facebook and get access to my blog site that way. Here's my Twitter address -   - and a quick search on Facebook will bring up my A4ES pages.  Hope that helps. Kind regards Mark S...

I said yesterday that the unions in Glasgow should be thoroughly ashamed of their behaviour in relation to equal pay and here is a post from the blog site archive explaining why. Because while Unison was warmly welcoming the 'pay protection' decision from the Court of Session in May 2017 - back in December 2006 the Glasgow Unison branch was threatening industrial action to secure special treatment for bonus earning, traditional male jobs. A minute of Glasgow City Counci's Executive Committee (dated 8 December 2006) makes the position crystal clear: the union threatened strike action to maintain the higher earnings of 'red circled jobs' yet the pay of the council's women workers was never brought into line with the pay of their male comparators. Which is, of course, the key point from the Court of Session judgment - that women workers in Glasgow were treated completely differently and much less favourably than their male colleagues although this...

More comments from readers who think the trade unions have a 'brass neck' for their spineless behaviour over the fight for equal pay in Glasgow. As regular readers know, the GMB union is not even part of the challenge to the Council's job evaluation (JE) scheme and WPBR pay arrangements! "Shameful behaviour from the collective unions and well done Mark again!" L "NLC workers know the truth on that" M "Well done on YOUR (not Unison's!) victory in Glasgow. "Your constant, ongoing fight for fairness is very much appreciated "Many Thanks" G More to follow - so watch this space.     Track Records and Equal Pay  (30/05/17) I'll have more to say in the next few days about the role the trade unions have played in the long fight for equal pay in Glasgow - for the most part it's awful one, if you ask me. But council workers in Glasgow are not fooled by the unions trying to jump on the equal...