Glasgow - Equal Pay Update

GMB members and ex-members in Glasgow contact me on a daily basis to say that 
they are being told very different stories by the union about the status of their equal pay claims.

As I explained on the blog site several weeks ago, the GMB decided to restrict its members equal pay claims in Glasgow to only three years - to the 'so-called' pay protection period between 2007 and 2009.

The same thing happened in North Lanarkshire Council two years ago and led to an almighty row which resulted in the GMB regional secretary being replaced and the 'sacking' of the union's lawyers.  

But don't take just my word for the GMB's madcap three year decision - read the following extract from a judgment of the Glasgow Employment Tribunals which explains that the GMB adopted a fundamentally different stance to all the other claimant organisations: A4ES, Unison and Unite.

Employment Tribunal decision - 13 August 2012

"Paragraph 7

"In broad terms, the Thompsons (Unison and Unite) and Fox Cross (A4ES) claimants say that the job evaluation study and associated pay provisions are discriminatory and cannot be relied upon by the respondent (Glasgow City Council). They further say that the study was not properlmyapplied to individual employees so that, even if the design of the study was sound, the study cannot be relied upon in relation to those of whom it was applied. In addition they contend that they pay protection arrangements are tainted by sex discrimination. It is said those three broad liens of attack are intertwined and each affords evidence that discrimination taints the job evaluation study and pay provisions, the way in which the sturdy was applied to individual employees and the pay protection arrangements.

"Paragraph 8 

"The Digby Brown claimants position is that they too attack the pay protection arrangements as tainted by sex discrimination. Where they depart from the other claimants is that they do not attack the job evaluation study and associated pay arrangements or the application of the study to individual employees."

So to summarise: the GMB did nothing until it lodged a grievance in 2009 and from then until 2017 they stuck to the line that the union wanted pay protection only.

All of which means that even from 2007 to 2009 there was no GMB challenge to any of the pay arrangements, not even the awful overtime arrangements, and no challenge to any of the gradings or point scoring systems. 

In effect, from 2009 onwards the GMB supported the employer's position against all the other unions and A4ESL, with the GMB only changing its tune after the Court of Session hearings in 2017.

At the time of the 2012 Employment Tribunal judgment the GMB was already out of step with everyone else and had several years to get on board with the other claimant organisations.

But the union chose not to do so, for some strange reason, the result being that the GMB was not part of the successful challenge to Glasgow City Council's job evaluation scheme (JES) and WPBR pay arrangements, at the recent Court of Session appeal in Edinburgh.

Which helps to explain why so many GMB members have now lost confidence in the union to protect their interests in the ongoing fight for equal pay with Glasgow City Council.

So if you ask me, it seems pretty clear that GMB members in Glasgow have been massively let down and fed a diet of 'pap', misinformation and half-truths about what has really been going on with their equal pay claims.

Why is the GMB the only claimant organisation and trade union to behave in this way? 

Who knows, but what sticks out like a sore thumb is that both Unison and Unite changed their tune a long time ago by supporting the challenge against the JES and WPBR initiated by Action 4 Equality Scotland.

So GMB members have lost out big time because there is now a 3 year gap at the heart of their claims against Glasgow City Council for the period 2009 to 2012. 

All of which means that the GMB has a lot of explaining to do, especially after the union was put 'on alert' over the issue after the debacle in North Lanarkshire.

More to follow soon - so watch this space.

  

Glasgow and Equal Pay (01/07/17)

Here are some of the readers' comments I've received in response my recent post in which I set the record straight about the role of the trade unions in the long fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council.

I was advised 12yrs ago by GMB that I was not entitled to a claim and I was to keep my mouth shut. So I phoned Action 4 Equality Scotland who took on my claim and got paid what was rightfully mine. Think it's my turn to tell GMB to keep their mouths shut.

M

I left GMB as well paying money for nothing

D


So did I they take your money and do nothing 

P

I feel totally deflated by the GMBs behaviour. I have been a faithful loyal member even drawing members in at points, but I am finished with them, the team they have running the show just now for Cordia are only interested in pleasing the company. I believe they know they are on the slippery slope as anger is growing and rekindling from the original equal pay payout. Just to say I will be doing my application to join A4ES, as I know no matter what the outcome you are fighting for our rights.

M

Glasgow and Equal Pay (30/06/17)

Here's the letter from the GMB's Gary Smith which I mentioned briefly on the blog site yesterday. 

GS/LHC

29th June 2017

Dear GMB Member,

The legal action around Pay Protection / Equal Pay has been long and drawn out. The whole situation with Equal Pay is complex and it is further complicated by the appeal over the Glasgow City Council job evaluation process. As a union we have tried to communicate as best we can on the union's position on the cases.

As you know private solicitors are also involved in the cases against Glasgow City Council. These solicitors are driven by profit. They make money from the claimants they represent. The private solicitors will take money from any settlement. That is not the case with members of GMB Scotland. Every penny GMB Scotland secures for you through our solicitors Thompsons will go to you as an individual. We believe Thompsons are the preeminent Equal Pay lawyers in Scotland that's why we have appointed them to represent your interests.

We understand that some of the private solicitors appear to be making comments about the GMB and the trade unions in general which are causing confusion and concern to our members. GMB Scotland will not be responding to all the comments made by the private solicitors. When we have something we can communicate to our members we will and it will be done in a totally transparent way.

I understand that our staff at GMB Scotland have received a few abusive phone calls. I know this whole issue is frustrating for members but I will not tolerate our staff being abused; they are just workers like everyone else. If anyone feels that their interests would be better served by the private lawyers then they are free transfer their case to them.

Those who are members of GMB Scotland can be assured our lawyers will do all they can to get your equal pay claim resolved as soon as possible. If we need to take action over job evaluation, after the appeal judgement is known, we will. GMB Scotland will also communicate with you in an absolutely open and transparent fashion as and when there is something of substance to say. Above all as a member of GMB Scotland you can be assured that any money due to you will be paid to you, it is not going to line the pockets of fat cat private lawyers.

It should never be forgotten that the responsibility for all the problems with equal pay ultimately lie with Glasgow City Council. It was Glasgow City Council who discriminated against you and spent a fortune of tax payers’ money in the courts trying to defend the indefensible. Thank you for your patience and ongoing support

-2-

We hope to have a further communication with members this afternoon. If you have any queries on the above, please feel free to email me on

gary.smith@gmb.org.uk

Yours sincerely

Gary Smith

Gary Smith

GMB Scotland Secretary  

GMB SCOTLAND – PROTECTING YOU AT WORK

General Secretary: Paul Kenny Acting Regional Secretary: Gary Smith Fountain House, 1/3 Woodside Crescent, Charing Cross, Glasgow G3 7UJ Tel: 0141 332 8641/9501 Fax: 0141 332 4491 - www.gmb.org.uk

Now there are so many things wrong with Gary's letter I hardly know where to begin, but let's make start by reminding readers that:

• the local trade unions in Glasgow kept their low paid women members in the dark for years about the pay differences between male and female jobs
• the local trade unions in Glasgow agreed with City Council management to 'cap' the Equal Pay Compensation Payments at a maximum of £9,000
• the local trade unions in Glasgow agreed with City Council management to exclude any overtime working from the Equal Pay Compensation Payments
• the local trade unions in Glasgow agreed with City Council management to exclude certain categories of employee, e.g. School Janitors, from the Equal Pay Compensation Payments
• the local trade unions in Glasgow agreed with City Council management to impose an even lower settlement cap (than £9,000) on certain categories of employee, e.g. Classroom Assistants
• the local trade unions in Glasgow agreed with City Council management to ditch the job evaluation scheme (JES) recommended by the national unions (and COSLA) in favour of an 'in-house' JE scheme and WPBR developed by an external consultant
• the local trade unions in Glasgow never once threatened strike action to bring the pay of the City's Council's largely female workforce into line with the much higher pay of their bonus earning male comparators 
• the local trade unions in Glasgow threatened strike action to gain special treatment for the many 'red circled' and former bonus earning jobs (after the WPBR was introduced) - and were given a guarantee in the shape of the Employee Development Commitment (EDC) that   the earnings of these male dominated jobs would be maintained at their pre-WPBR levels

In other words if, as Gary Smith claims, Glasgow City Council was ultimately responsible for this widespread pay discrimination and "spent a fortune of tax payers' money trying to defend the indefensible" - why did the trade unions support senior managers instead standing up for the interests of their lowest paid members? 

I will have more to say on this subject in the days ahead, but if you agree that the GMB is engaged in a shameless attempt to 'rewrite history', then drop me a note as I'll be interested to hear what readers have to say.

  

Glasgow Equal Pay Claims (17/05/17)

A number of readers in Glasgow have been in touch to ask if they can transfer their ongoing equal pay claims from the GMB union to Action 4 Equality Scotland (A4ES).

Now the answer to that is a qualified 'Yes' - qualified because the GMB has a track record in making a terrible mess of their members equal pay claims.

As they did in North Lanarkshire, for example, where GMB members had their claims restricted to only 3 years unlike all the other claimant organisations.

In Glasgow, my understanding is that the GMB is not part of the recent second appeal in the Court of Session which is challenging the City Council's WPBR pay arrangements.

So it could be that the GMB's behaviour in North Lanarkshire is being repeated in Glasgow.

But before accepting any new claims from unhappy GMB members, the A4ES legal team would need to assess the cases on an individual basis to ensure that they can be taken forward and have not been compromised in some way.

If any GMB members would like to pursue the matter, drop me a note (in confidence of course) to: markirvine@compuserve.com 

    

North Lanarkshire Update (21/01/17)

I don't blow my own trumpet too often, but I think it's fair to say that I have played a crucial role in 'persuading' the GMB union to take a more critical and active interest in the equal pay claims of its members in North Lanarkshire Council.

Regular readers will recall that for some reason the GMB decided to restrict the claims of its members in NLC to only three years, instead of following Action 4 Equality Scotland's lead and challenging the council's job evaluation scheme (JES). 

But after I highlighted the issue on my blog site the GMB was spurred into action which resulted in the union's general secretary, Sir Paul Kenny, removing the GMB regional secretary in Scotland (Harry Donaldson) and replacing him with a chap called Gary Smith, in an effort to clear up the mess.

Now I don't know and have never met Gary Smith although to be fair he has acted decisively by effectively 'sacking' the GMB's lawyers (Digby Brown) and 'heavying-up' on Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council.

Apparently, the GMB is pursuing a formal complaint against Digby Brown and here is a previous post from the blog site which explains the background in more detail.

NLC Update (15/10/15)

A kind reader has passed on to me details of a letter from the GMB to union members in North Lanarkshire - the following two paragraphs caught my attention immediately:

"I (Gary Smith) have launched a full investigation into the North Lanarkshire case and a complete assessment of the legal strategy pursued by Digby Brown in relation to our equal pay cases in all of Scotland. If claims need to be amended, they will be, and if we have received the wrong advice we will take action to protect our members' position.

"In the meantime, if you are a GMB member and you have a case with Digby Brown, we will be happy to transfer it to a different firm if you are unhappy with the current placement. Please contact our GMB law firm - UnionLine - at pi@unionline.co.uk or call them on 0300 333 0303, If you would like us to relocate your case. UnionLine is a legal firm owned by the union and operates on a not for profit basis."

Now it seems obvious to me that the GMB must have lost confidence in Digby Brown, but in the recent members' meetings I've attended the GMB explained that a national policy decision was responsible for restricting its members claims to only 3-years.

But now the GMB appears to be blaming Digby Brown although I fail to understand how members can be invited to transfer their equal pay claims elsewhere (to another law firm), without being told, first of all, what has gone wrong in relation to their claims Digby Brown.

So the following questions need an urgent answer, if you ask me:

1 Will the results of the GMB's investigation be shared with union members in North Lanarkshire?

2 Does the GMB now accept that its legal advice was wrong?

3 Will the GMB be sharing this legal advice with the members affected?

4 Will the GMB confirm that settlement proposals were put directly to North Lanarkshire Council by, or on behalf of, the GMB trade union? 

The sooner we have an independents complaints procedure for trade unions in the UK the better - because this is a perfect example of the difficulty that ordinary union members often have in holding big union bureaucracies to account.

North Lanarkshire Update (15/01/17)

Here are some kind words from another satisfied A4ES client in North Lanarkshire Council.

"Just a wee note to say my payment came into my account today thank you all so much again for all your hard work and patience, you all deserve a medal  D"

Now a medal would be nice, not least because I have not received one in a long time since my football paying teenage years in fact, which I still have somewhere by the way. 

But I'm just glad to have been of service and to have made such a difference to so many people's lives during the long fight for equal pay in Scotland's councils.

  

The Fight for Equal Pay (06/01/17)

I've been inspired by a recent Twitter conversation to dig into the blog site archive and revisit the key landmarks in the fight for equal pay in Scotland's local councils.

1. The background to Equal Pay lies in the early 1990s when the big public sector trade unions (GMB, NUPE and TGWU) set out to negotiate a set of common conditions of service for all UK local government workers - with a new 'Single Status' Agreement.
2. The goal of the trade unions was shared, in principle, by the UK employers and this was to end the widespread pay discrimination against low paid, predominantly female, council employees - in caring, cleaning, catering and school support jobs. 
3. The unions warned the employers that if negotiations failed to deliver equal pay, then they would seek to achieve their aims via the courts, since it was obvious to everyone that the employers could not justify a Home Carer being paid the equivalent of only £6.00 an hour while a Refuse Collector was earning £9.00 per hour.
4. At the time Mark Irvine was the Head of Local Government for Unison in Scotland and a key figure in the UK and Scottish negotiations which led to a UK wide agreement in 1997 that, subsequently, became the Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement in Scotland in 1999.
5. Stefan Cross (now a QC) was then a leading employment lawyer with Thompsons Solicitors and fought his first major equal pay case as far back as 1995 before setting up a practice of his own, initially based in Newcastle.
6. The trade unions and employers were both alarmed at this development, as they had completely failed to implement the landmark UK and Scottish Single Status agreements, despite all their fine words about tackling discrimination and delivering equal pay for work of equal value.  
7. Stefan Cross and Mark Irvine met in Newcastle in March 2005 to discuss reviving the fight for equal pay north of the border. In August 2005 Action 4 Equality Scotland was launched in a fanfare of publicity, courtesy of a major BBC Scotland news programme (see post below dated 28 May 2016 along with the original BBC web site report from 2005).
8. All of the Scottish papers followed the story up and after years in the doldrums Equal Pay was front page news once again: Stefan Cross and Stefan Cross Solicitors provided the legal expertise and representation in the Employment Tribunals; Mark Irvine and A4ES became the campaign vehicle to get a message across to potential claimants and the wider public.
9. Glasgow was the first council to be targeted (as the largest in Scotland) and after a few months of posturing and insisting that the City had no equal pay problem, the Council sounded a hasty retreat. By Christmas Glasgow was offering derisory sums of cash to 'buy out' people's claims.
10. Lots of workers succumbed to the temptation, given the Council's 'bullying' tactics and the time of year. The workforce also lacked support from their own Labour-supporting trade unions who had failed to tackle the issue for years, even though all the big councils were Labour controlled, as was COSLA, of course, the self-styled voice of Scottish local government.
11. Glasgow reached an 'interim' settlement of claims with A4ES up to 31 March 2006, but not for the period from 1 April 2006 onwards when the Council introduced new local pay arrangements and a new job evaluation scheme (JES).
12. The hard work of extending the equal pay campaign across Scotland had begun and within two years A4ES was leading the charge in many other councils as well including  Edinburgh, Fife, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Falkirk, North Ayrshire and so on.
13. I began writing my blog in January 2007 and restricted myself, initially, to news and reports about the ongoing campaign, but over the years the blog 'grew like 'Topsy' and evolved into something that I enjoy writing for many other reasons as well.
14. Towards the end of 2008 Carol Fox joined Stefan Cross Solicitors (see post below dated 15 October 2008) and assumed responsibility for the day-to-day legal cases in Scotland. 
15. Carol played a key role in the ongoing work in the Employment Tribunals, for example in the successful case against South Lanarkshire Council (SLC). A talented and very feisty woman barrister named Sandhya Drew presented the A4ES case and the long-running tribunal eventually found in the claimants favour.
16. Meanwhile the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) got involved after Labour-run South Lanarkshire refused an freedom of information (FoI) request from Mark Irvine. SLC appealed a SIC ruling (in Mark Irvine's favour) requiring the Council to publish information relating to the pay differences between traditional male and female jobs.
17. After losing its appeal case to a unanimous judgement at the UK Supreme Court in London, SLC 'sued for peace' and settlements quickly followed for or over 3,000 A4ES clients. The local unions in South Lanarkshire looked ridiculous, by the way, having previously discouraged their members from pursuing equal pay claims against the local Labour-run Council.
18. Another person that must be mentioned in dispatches, of course, is the indomitable Daphne Romney QC who drove a veritable 'coach and horses' through the pay arrangements that North Lanarkshire Council had introduced in 2007, with the Labour supporting union again playing a very negative role. 
19. Again thousands of low paid, predominantly women workers, were properly compensated after years of unequal pay and having the wool pulled over their eyes by their employers and trade unions. 
20. Carol Fox decided to step back from the fray in the summer of 2015, for personal and family reasons, and since then A4ES has worked with another firm of solicitors HBJ Gateley to provide clients with first class legal support (see post below dated 6 September 2015).
21. Ironically, after all this time has passed things have come full circle again as the equal pay campaign focuses on Labour-run Glasgow, as the only major council in Scotland not to have reached a settlement with A4ES over its post-job evaluation pay arrangements. 

But A4ES, Stefan Cross and Mark Irvine have all been involved from the start - over 20 years ago - and we are determined to see this fight through to the end.