Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

While Glasgow front-line workers are out in the wind and the snow looking after their clients and service users, the council's chief executive Annemarie O'Donnell appears to be on something of a 'go slow'. My FoI request from more than a week ago has still not been acknowledged, nor has my reminder email of 23 February 2018. Thank goodness other parts of the City Council are not run in this kind of terribly slapdash fashion, otherwise front-line services would grind to a complete halt. In any event, I'll have much more to say soon. Because this is a really big issue, given that senior council officials are telling me they have little or no information about their discredited, 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme which sounds incredible to me - quite unbelievable, in fact. How could that possibly happen in Scotland's largest, best resourced, most 'professional' council?  23 February  2018 Annemarie O'Donnell Chief Executi...

Here is the stark and shocking reality of how the 'rules' of the WPBR have been designed by Glasgow City Council to disadvantage female dominated jobs while favouring traditional male jobs. The most notorious example is the completely invented '37 hour rule' and the accompanying overtime working practices which treat women workers as second class citizens.  98% of male dominated jobs benefit from the 37 hour rule and O/T practices 2% of female dominated jobs benefit from the 37 hour rule and O/T practices No other work related benefit operates in this way - people don't have to work 37 hours to qualify for holiday pay, sick pay, maternity leave, paternity leave etc. Put simply the 'rule' is a blatant example of the gender discrimination on which the whole WPBR is based. Many Home Carers, for example, work more than 37 hours every week, but they are issued with separate contracts for working these additional hours so they don't qu...