Glasgow - The 'Casino' Council
Stefan Cross explains what's at stake in today's hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
Council officials 'bet the house' earlier this year on Glasgow's WPBR pay scheme being given a clean bill of health, but this strategy came completely unstuck when the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, reached a unanimous decision that the WPBR is 'unfit for purpose'.
If senior officials get their way, Glasgow may go 'all in' again and bet the house for a second time in a desperate effort to recover their losses and kick the whole business into the long grass, which is really just playing fast and loose with public money.
So if you ask me, it's high time Glasgow stopped digging and faced up to their obligations over equal pay which the City Council should have done many years ago.
ANYONE FOR DOUBLE OR QUITS?
Today Glasgow City Council is seeking permission from the Court of Session to appeal to the U.K. SUPREME COURT the second decision on WPBR.
Glasgow City Council seem to believe that if they win they could save the council several hundred million pounds.
Glasgow - Stop Digging! (19/08/17)
Stefan Cross tells it straight in this agenda piece for The Herald about the long fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council.
In effect, Glasgow 'bet the house' but lost hands down, even though the City Council had the opportunity to settle these issues amicably, by negotiation, a long time ago.
Yet for some strange reason a succession of Labour-led councils relied on very poor advice from senior officials and legal advisers, instead of facing up to their obligations over equal pay.
Many of those responsible have now left the council, through retirement or other generous terms, but the big challenge for the new SNP led administration is to accept that the Council is in a big hole of its own making - and 'stop digging'.
So maybe it's time that some of the City Council's senior officials and legal advisers were shown the door?
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15482341.Will_Glasgow_drop_fight_against_equal_pay_/
Will Glasgow drop fight against equal pay?
Glasgow City Council seem to believe that if they win they could save the council several hundred million pounds.
We think they are wrong but let’s assume they are right. What this means is that it will be impossible to settle the claims. The tribunal hearings are sisted and the council continues to operate WPBR. Appealing will delay final resolution by several years.
What the council don’t understand is that if the lose again it will COST the council hundreds of millions.
What the council don’t understand is that if the lose again it will COST the council hundreds of millions.
So, just for illustration, if they settle now it will cost £500 million. If they win it might cost £100m but if they lose, because of the delay they will have to pay 5 years extra losses and aggregate interest.
Cost to the council literally doubles to £1billion - an extra £500m at least.
So by appealing the council are putting a £500 million bet on double or quits.
RED or BLACK anyone
Stefan Cross
So by appealing the council are putting a £500 million bet on double or quits.
RED or BLACK anyone
Stefan Cross
Glasgow - Stop Digging! (19/08/17)
Stefan Cross tells it straight in this agenda piece for The Herald about the long fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council.
In effect, Glasgow 'bet the house' but lost hands down, even though the City Council had the opportunity to settle these issues amicably, by negotiation, a long time ago.
Yet for some strange reason a succession of Labour-led councils relied on very poor advice from senior officials and legal advisers, instead of facing up to their obligations over equal pay.
Many of those responsible have now left the council, through retirement or other generous terms, but the big challenge for the new SNP led administration is to accept that the Council is in a big hole of its own making - and 'stop digging'.
So maybe it's time that some of the City Council's senior officials and legal advisers were shown the door?
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15482341.Will_Glasgow_drop_fight_against_equal_pay_/
Will Glasgow drop fight against equal pay?
By Stefan Cross QC - The Herald
Stefan Cross QC
Every political party and every politician will tell you that they believe in the principle of equal pay for men and women.
But when you challenge that principle in practice it becomes a different story. Protecting the mens’ wages comes first, saving money comes second and the rights of the women come a distant last.
We are about to find out if that charge still sticks as today’s Court of Session ruling means that GCC faces a bill that could run into hundreds of millions of pounds purely because they have for over a decade set their face against resolving these issues with us on an amicable basis.
To understand how we got into this mess you have to go back over 30 years. In the 1980s all local councils agreed a new job evaluation scheme (JES) for manual workers covering all jobs done mainly by men such as refuse, gardening and road workers and all mainly female jobs such as catering, cleaning and caring.
This meant a home carer was graded the same as the driver of a refuse lorry. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with this scoring, what matters is that all the employers and the unions did so.
This meant that legally these two jobs should have been paid the same. By 2005 the nationally agreed rate for the job was about £11,000 and that what the women were paid, but because of automatic bonuses the men were getting paid anything up to £21,000.
The council now agrees that this was wrong and the women were therefore entitled to be paid the same £21,000. Did they? Err no.
Instead the council terminated the old pay arrangement and imposed a new pay structure.
Now this in itself was not unusual, indeed there was a nationally agreed scheme agreed with the unions to enable this to be put in place. But Glasgow City Council refused to follow the national agreement.
It decided to go it alone and create its own JES scheme. On top of that the council promised the men that they would protect their old earnings but refused to give the same protection to the women.
What did this mean in practice? It meant that instead of being paid the same as a man doing a job which has been of equal value for 20 years the council downgraded the women and gave them new salary still much less than the men.
Net result was that women had an effective pay cut of over £5,000. To rub salt into the wounds they also took away the womens’ right to overtime pay and other enhancements. Guess who kept those rights? Yes the former bonus earning men. This is supposed to be an equal opportunities employer!
We have challenged all these decisions. At the same time we urged the council to resolve these cases by agreement. They refused instead gambling that their lawyers advice was better than ours. They have now lost that bet.
The Court of Session in two decisions this year held, first, that the women were entitled to the same protection as the men but even more importantly that the council had failed to prove that its JES scheme was valid under the Equal Pay Act, the now nearly half century old legislation designed to make sure men and women’s labour is valued equally, and not tainted with discrimination.
Stefan Cross QC
Every political party and every politician will tell you that they believe in the principle of equal pay for men and women.
But when you challenge that principle in practice it becomes a different story. Protecting the mens’ wages comes first, saving money comes second and the rights of the women come a distant last.
We are about to find out if that charge still sticks as today’s Court of Session ruling means that GCC faces a bill that could run into hundreds of millions of pounds purely because they have for over a decade set their face against resolving these issues with us on an amicable basis.
To understand how we got into this mess you have to go back over 30 years. In the 1980s all local councils agreed a new job evaluation scheme (JES) for manual workers covering all jobs done mainly by men such as refuse, gardening and road workers and all mainly female jobs such as catering, cleaning and caring.
This meant a home carer was graded the same as the driver of a refuse lorry. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with this scoring, what matters is that all the employers and the unions did so.
This meant that legally these two jobs should have been paid the same. By 2005 the nationally agreed rate for the job was about £11,000 and that what the women were paid, but because of automatic bonuses the men were getting paid anything up to £21,000.
The council now agrees that this was wrong and the women were therefore entitled to be paid the same £21,000. Did they? Err no.
Instead the council terminated the old pay arrangement and imposed a new pay structure.
Now this in itself was not unusual, indeed there was a nationally agreed scheme agreed with the unions to enable this to be put in place. But Glasgow City Council refused to follow the national agreement.
It decided to go it alone and create its own JES scheme. On top of that the council promised the men that they would protect their old earnings but refused to give the same protection to the women.
What did this mean in practice? It meant that instead of being paid the same as a man doing a job which has been of equal value for 20 years the council downgraded the women and gave them new salary still much less than the men.
Net result was that women had an effective pay cut of over £5,000. To rub salt into the wounds they also took away the womens’ right to overtime pay and other enhancements. Guess who kept those rights? Yes the former bonus earning men. This is supposed to be an equal opportunities employer!
We have challenged all these decisions. At the same time we urged the council to resolve these cases by agreement. They refused instead gambling that their lawyers advice was better than ours. They have now lost that bet.
The Court of Session in two decisions this year held, first, that the women were entitled to the same protection as the men but even more importantly that the council had failed to prove that its JES scheme was valid under the Equal Pay Act, the now nearly half century old legislation designed to make sure men and women’s labour is valued equally, and not tainted with discrimination.
The council will either have to go back to the drawing board or let the tribunal do it for them. In the meantime the women have been paid anything up to £6000 a year less than men doing jobs which were of equal value. So will the council now agree to pay these women equally or will they find another excuse? We’ll wait and see.
