Glasgow - Equal Pay Update

The Leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, has taken the MSP John Mason to task for his insulting comments that equal pay claimants in Glasgow should 'pay' for their own employment rights to be upheld.

Good for her, I say, and although we're not out of the woods yet it's encouraging to hear the Council Leader speak so plainly about another colleague from the SNP.

I hope that MSPs and MPs will make a big  effort in the New Year to understand properly the discriminatory nature of Glasgow's pay arrangements and why the City Council's WPBR pay scheme was judged to be 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court.  

As I said in a previous post A4ES will be organising an equal pay event and will inviting all Glasgow MSPs and MPs to attend a briefing - followed by a discussion with a cross section of equal pay claimants in Glasgow.

Dear XXXXX

Thank you for contacting me regarding this.

Mr Mason’s email contains a number of inaccuracies regarding the process and way forward on equal pay and I have contacted him directly to correct these misunderstandings. He has been provided with relevant and up to date information so he can fully inform any constituents who contact him.

For the avoidance of doubt, Mr Mason, who as an MSP has no role in the City Government and therefore equal pay negotiations, he was wrong to suggest that the Council would be looking for people to take less than they are due in order to protect services and jobs. It is a clear commitment of the City Government that I lead, to settle outstanding equal pay cases for the full amount that they are worth. Negotiations are on-going between all parties to determine what that figure is for each claimant or group of claimants. This will be a complex and lengthy process but it is one that has started and that is progressing.

I hope that this has reassured you that the onus is on the Council to find the money to pay for the full settlement, not on claimants to take less than they are due.

Best wishes,


Susan (Aitken)

  

Glasgow Update - Truth, Reconciliation and Equal Pay (19/09/17)

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.

The Fight for Equal Pay in Glasgow (09/10/17)

Lots of readers are sending copies of their emails and tweets to Glasgow politicians - here's an example of a letter one person has sent to Nicola Sturgeon, a local Glasgow MSP and Scotland's First Minister.

If you ask me, the SNP should make a real virtue of the situation in Glasgow by announcing its intention to implement in full the terms of the original 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.

Now this landmark 1999 National Agreement was intended to sweep away the widespread pay discrimination against thousands of low paid, female dominated jobs in Scottish councils - jobs done by carers, cleaners, cooks, catering staff, clerical workers, classroom assistants and so on.

In my view this would be a real 'game changer' and as well as being the right thing to do, I believe such a bold move would be very popular because it would show some real political leadership after years of betrayal by successive Labour councils.

So keep up the emails and tweets because they make the politicians sit up and take notice - as I've said many times on the blog site before 'Many Hands Make Light Work'.

Dear Ms Sturgeon,

I am writing to you to ask that you intervene in the ongoing saga surrounding Glasgow City Council's (GCC) WPBR scheme. The scheme concerned the equal payment of council employees across sexes. You will no doubt be aware that the Court of Session recently ruled that the scheme was "unlawful" and "unfit for purpose" as it discriminated and underpaid female employees and those in "traditionally" female jobs.

This year, for the first time in decades the council changed hands, with the SNP's Susan Aitken now leading the council. I held hope that this result would see a change of approach in industrial relations and how the council was run. Given the party's clear recognition in its manifesto that "significant numbers of lower-paid staff – the vast majority of them women – have waited over a decade for settlement of their equal pay claims" and pledge that it would "[work towards] settling all outstanding equal pay claims within this Council term" I felt that the SNP would finally expel the disgraceful stain on the council's record - one that has underpinned my 25-year career with them.

Shamelessly, the council is still dragging its heels on the issue - refusing to release details of the scheme and has sought leave to appeal the court's decision. This despite Susan herself stating that "GCC will not pursue further appeals and will now talk to workers". I fear, like so often, the SNP has sought to lull the public with false promises and that it is politics as usual.

I am therefore asking that you please take charge of the situation and act on behalf of the low earning, discriminated against GCC workers. Please do not discard this as an internal matter for GCC. This is a national outrage and at this point GCC is demonstrating that it is unfit or unwilling to do the right thing. Show leadership in who it is the SNP stands for and deliver on the transformation that was promised.

Sincerely,

AC