Glasgow Update - Truth, Reconciliation and Equal Pay

Here's a thoughtful opinion piece from The Herald newspaper in which Marianne Taylor argues that the new Leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, ought to be given a proper chance to 'fix' the long running scandal over unequal pay in Scotland's largest council.

I completely agree, I have to say.

Because as Marianne points out the claimants in this case have been 'utterly screwed over' by the very people who were supposed to be protecting their interests which includes the trade unions, of course, as well as senior managers and elected politicians who were running Glasgow City Council during this period. 

"These are women who have been consistently let down - let’s be honest, utterly screwed over - by both their employers and those supposed to be looking out for them. First came the institutional discrimination of the successive council administrations that rigged the structures to ensure they wouldn’t have to pay women as much as men doing work of equal merit. Then there were the unions that colluded with this position to protect the interests of their mainly male memberships, that encouraged women to settle for less."

A series of Labour administrations going back to 1999 are largely responsible for this mess and they were aided and abetted by Labour supporting trade unions, in the best  traditions of Tammany Hall, who colluded with senior managers to 'look after' the interests of higher earning groups of male workers - at the expense of much lower paid women workers.

The trade unions agreed to the introduction of the WPBR pay arrangements back in 2007 yet now try to claim credit for challenging the City Council's controversial pay scheme in the Court of Session - they have no shame, if you ask me.

The preposterous GMB did not even support the successful challenge in the Court of Session which was led by Action 4 Equality Scotland, of course, but the GMB union now tries to pretend it has been fighting the good fight over equal pay since Day One.

Complete nonsense, of course, because the GMB and other trade unions had previously 'screwed over' Glasgow's women workers by encouraging them to accept miserable offers of financial settlement back in 2005, having kept them in the dark for years about the huge differences in pay between traditional male and female council jobs.

So Susan Aitken does deserve a proper chance to put things right, but this can only happen if there is now openness and transparency about how the men were 'looked after' by a succession of managers, politicians and trade unions.

Because if Glasgow is going to have 'truth and reconciliation' over equal pay - the truth part has to come first.

  


http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/15540585.Marianne_Taylor__Give_Susan_Aitken_the_chance_to_tackle_Glasgow_s_equal_pay_fiasco/?ref=twtrec


Marianne Taylor: Give Susan Aitken the chance to tackle equal pay fiasco

By Marianne Taylor - The Herald


Herald & Times staff portraits - Marianne Taylor Photograph by Colin Mearns

I FEEL sorry for Susan Aitken, I really do. Think about it. You win the leadership of Scotland’s biggest local authority on a platform of being a new broom to sweep away the stale complacency of Labour’s near 40-year tenure. You’ve spent your political life railing against gender and class inequality, and now you have the opportunity to show genuine leadership on how Glasgow City Council progresses these issues.

Then the curve ball no one expected lands in your lap, and only a few months into the job you’re being accused of standing in the way of the very equality you strive for, accused of preventing thousands of low-paid, working class women from getting the equal pay they deserve. It must hurt like hell.

Following Glasgow City Council’s decision to seek permission to appeal the recent court ruling granting equal pay for thousands of female employees, that’s exactly the position Ms Aitken finds herself in.

It comes after two rulings at the Court of Session around the council’s 2007 pay regrading exercise, which was designed to close the gender pay gap but has now been been ruled discriminatory, thus opening the door for thousands of current and past female employees to make claims, potentially costing the council hundreds of millions.

This figure sounds vague, I know, but make no mistake, it’s the sort of amount that could bankrupt a big city authority already creaking under the pain of austerity and, like its peers (who, incidentally, settled their equal pay claims) facing big cuts from central government. As a Glasgow council tax payer, I’m genuinely worried. Will there be any services left if, as the lawyer representing many of the women contends, the final bill reaches £500m? Could we really find ourselves in a situation where low-paid women have to be made redundant to ensure other low-paid women get back pay? What a hideous reminder of how difficult it is to resolve the discrimination and inequalities of the past, even when you want to.

But it’s surely not as hideous as the prospect of those at the centre of the claim not getting what’s owed to them. These are, after all, women who do the under-paid and under-valued work many of us would balk at, the home carers struggling to make the lives of our elderly relatives more liveable, while struggling to make ends meet themselves.

These are women who have been consistently let down - let’s be honest, utterly screwed over - by both their employers and those supposed to be looking out for them. First came the institutional discrimination of the successive council administrations that rigged the structures to ensure they wouldn’t have to pay women as much as men doing work of equal merit. Then there were the unions that colluded with this position to protect the interests of their mainly male memberships, that encouraged women to settle for less. The GMB recently faced legal action from its own members over this very point, with many workers feeling they had little choice but to go to no-win-no-fee lawyers.

It’s little wonder the Glasgow women involved are outraged – they fully deserve to be. Think how many payday loans may not have had to taken out to put food on the table over the years if the small but significant extra sums due in the first place for had been forthcoming. Think of the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants that might not have been necessary to quell the stress that accompanies working poverty.

Many of these women will also have been done over by the state with regard to pensions if they were unlucky enough to be born in the 1950s; this latest delay by the council on equal pay must seem like the final insult.

But I would urge them and their representatives - in some cases unions that contributed to the problem in the first place - to show patience, hold fire on the protests for now, and take Ms Aitken’s commitment to ending the injustice and settling up at face value.

I believed Ms Aitken when she wrote in the Herald last week that seeking leave to appeal the decision is a procedural move aimed at buying the council time to work out where to start the process. I believe her when she says the previous Labour administration not only did not expect to lose these cases, but made no preparations for the outcome the council now faces. Shame on them.

We should accept this situation was not the fault of Ms Aitken or her party. As I’m sure she is well aware, however, no new council leader can keep blaming the previous administration forever; Ms Aitken must find a way to honour the commitment she has made to women so let down by so many for so long, without bankrupting the city in the process. And do so in a timely fashion.

Clearly, the Scottish Government may have to help in some capacity; Nicola Sturgeon will, after all, be under pressure to honour her own rhetoric on equal pay. More importantly, however, Scotland cannot claim to be a modern, progressive nation until it rights this wrong. Glasgow’s working women deserve this much and more.