Many Hands = Light Work

I get emails from readers every day asking what they can do if anything to help in the fight for equal pay with Glasgow City Council.

Now the focus for the past few months has been on the Court of Session and its decision to uphold the claimants' appeal on 'Protected Pay' which means that women workers are (and were) entitled to receive the same treatment (or no less favourable treatment) as their male colleagues.

I'll have more to say on this in the days ahead, but as everyone gets back to normal after the summer break I think it is fair to say that we're not out of the woods yet.   

Because while there has been a change of political leadership within the City Council, there are still a number of key issues to resolve such as:

• Glasgow's pay arrangements are not 'open, honest and transparent' - much of the detail about the treatment of traditional male, former bonus earning jobs remains hidden from public view and proper scrutiny
• City Council officials are refusing FoI requests intended to shine a light on the EDC (Employment Development Commitment) which gave a guarantee to former bonus earners that their higher pay would be maintained beyond the three year protection period.
• City Council officials appear to be interpreting 'protection' for the women workers in a very different way to the protection arrangements enjoyed by male jobs, even though the City Council has no justification for the huge differences in pay which existed before the WPBR was introduced in 2007. 
• City Council officials appear to be driven by financial considerations, as they were back in 2005, when thousands of low paid women workers were effectively 'duped' into accepting low offers of settlement worth only a fraction of the true value of their claims.
• City Council officials find it impossible to explain how the same financial or budgetary constraints never managed to apply to all the traditional male jobs over these past 13 years. 

So there is still work to be done and if the Glasgow campaign has to be re-started in earnest, there will be plenty of opportunities for the thousands of equal pay claimants across the City to play their part.  

  

Glasgow and Equal Pay (16/08/17)

Lots of readers from Glasgow have been in touch to ask why it's taking so long to reach a settlement of people's equal pay claims especially as the City Council has not appealed the recent decision of the Court of Session.

As regular readers will recall, the Court of Session decision related to the 'protection period' following the introduction of the City Council's new WPBR pay arrangements in 2006/07 and the court decided that the women claimants were entitled to receive the same treatment (or no less favourable treatment) as their male comparators.

So far so good.

But the City Council is now trying to limit the range of male jobs which women claimants can use to compare their earnings and differences in pay - by arguing that 'male comparators' should be restricted to the new pay arrangements which applied under the WPBR scheme.

Now if you ask me, this proposal is completely bonkers and blatantly unfair.

Because it would prevent the women claimants from comparing their treatment to that of various high earning, former bonus paying jobs like Gravediggers, Gardeners and Refuse Workers which under the old (pre-WPBR) pay arrangements were on lower grades than their female colleagues.

In other words the Council seems to be getting up to its old tricks again and if its argument were to prevail, this would significantly reduce the value of people's outstanding equal pay claims. 

As far as A4ES is concerned the underlying problem is that Glasgow's pay arrangements are the exact opposite of 'open, honest and transparent' - and this needs to change. 

The comparison that needs to be made is between the pay arrangements that existed before the WPBR was introduced in 2006/07 because the only way that women can receive the same treatment as the men is for their pay to be 'equalised', or brought into line with the pay of the men, before pay protection arrangements are considered.

If this had happened back in 2006/07, as it should, then no less favourable treatment for the women's jobs would have ensured that a Home Carer could not be paid less than a Gravedigger, Gardener or a Refuse Worker in 2017.

Glasgow may now be heading down the same path as neighbouring councils in North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire, despite the fact that the legal strategy followed by those two councils ended in abject defeat.

Time will tell because the City Council will be forced to make its position clear in the weeks  ahead.

So watch this space - and keep spreading the word to as many people as possible via Twitter and Facebook.

  

Glasgow - Musical Chairs (13/08/17)

What does the fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council have to do with the old party game of 'Musical Chairs?

Find out on the blog site this coming week when all shall be revealed - in the meantime here's your starter for 10, as they say on University Challenge.

   

Glasgow's Pay Arrangements (11/0817)

I submitted an FoI request to Glasgow City Council earlier this year asking for details on the comparative rates of pay for various traditional male jobs.

One of the jobs I asked about was that of Garage Engineer and back in 2007 this enjoyed a similar basic rate pay to that of a Home Carer, for example, of £6.92 - although the male job was also receiving a big bonus which the Council has still not disclosed.

I specifically asked the Council to provide pay information for 2007 and again in 2017 to see how things had changed over that 10 year period and this is what GCC had to say. 

Garage Engineer (Pre-WPBR Grade - EO1, Post WPBR Grade - 5)

2007
Bonus Pay Bonus payments for employees in this post was variable from week to week.

Annual Salary £269.90 basic per week

Hourly Rate of Pay £6.92


2017

Bonus Pay No Bonus payments received.

Annual Salary Core Pay is £25,098.63

Hourly Rate of Pay £13.75

So over the course the past 10 years and as a result of the WPBR pay scheme the basic pay of this male dominated job has risen to £25,000 which is clearly much higher than the basic pay of a Home Carer, for example, or a similarly graded job done by women workers.

As readers can see for themselves, the hourly rate of pay for this male job has also increased dramatically, almost doubling from £6.92 to £13.75

Now if anyone can show me a comparative female job that has fared nearly so well under Glasgow's controversial WPBR scheme, I promise to jump into the River Clyde on the morning of New Year's Day 2018. 

The big question for the City Council and for future settlement negotiations is: "How come this traditional male job (and many others like it) did so well out of the new WPBR pay arrangements - when their women colleagues fared so poorly?"