Glasgow, Walls and Equal Pay
Stefan Cross posted this 'Glasgow Update' on Facebook last night which is just about what I was expecting - seems like the council's senior officials are digging-in while the politicians are desperately trying to stay above the fray.
But if you ask me, this is all bound to end badly because senior officials who were given a completely free hand to do what they liked over the WPBR, for example, will now demand that every 'i' is dotted and every 't' is crossed by elected councillors who previously handed over blank cheques and made a point of not asking awkward questions such as:
"What if you're completely wrong?" or "How do you defend a 37 hour WPBR 'rule' which blatantly discriminates against our largely female council workforce?"
"What if you're completely wrong?" or "How do you defend a 37 hour WPBR 'rule' which blatantly discriminates against our largely female council workforce?"
So the scene is set for a big build up of tension and an obvious illustration of how seriously officials are taking this is that, as Stefan reports, the council has still to respond to protection period figures which were presented back in January.
Meanwhile the council's political leadership keeps as far away from the scene of the action (or inaction) as it can, for fear of being accused of 'interfering' in the settlement process.
Yet there are no real negotiations underway - and no further meetings will take place until meeting Number 9 on 17 April 2018.
A reader has shared a copy of an interesting letter from GCC's chief executive Annemarie O'Donnell which is illuminating as far as the council's mindset is concerned - I'll have more to say on this later today when I publish the contents of the letter on the blog.
Yet there are no real negotiations underway - and no further meetings will take place until meeting Number 9 on 17 April 2018.
A reader has shared a copy of an interesting letter from GCC's chief executive Annemarie O'Donnell which is illuminating as far as the council's mindset is concerned - I'll have more to say on this later today when I publish the contents of the letter on the blog.
Meeting 8 with the council and it doesn’t get any better. Believe it or not we are still discussing minutes from December, draft Terms of Reference, and what is and is not confidential. Sadly the council insisted that part of today’s meeting be confidential. So there is stuff I can’t discuss. This post is therefore my impressions of the current state of play.
There is in my view, no real negotiations yet. We’ve not even received a considered response to our protection period figures which we presented to the council in January.
To us it feels like the officers are basically ignoring what we say and ploughing on regardless. At the same time putting more and more distance between us and councillors.
The lead officers approach is to look at what they consider to be the lowest figure that think a tribunal will award and work from there. They are clinging to the original tribunal decision and clutching at whatever straws they can find within it. At least that’s my interpretation of what’s being said. They say that’s their mandate from the leader and their legal obligation. Of course we have no direct access to SA so we don’t know if that’s a correct understanding or not.
We totally disagree with their interpretation of the judgments and their approach. We hope they reconsider.
The claimant group has decided to take the initiative and prepare proposals for the council that address the whole period, not just protection, and hopefully get down to talking about the substantive issues in dispute. Sadly we wont be able share these as they will be confidential. We agree with the council that,in principle, offers or proposals should be confidential until agreed otherwise or negotiations break down.
We don’t meet the council again until 17th April but we need that time to work on our proposals. It’s very complicated and we still have a lot of work to do. Karl and Suzanne from UNISON are working on this together. We hope our initiative will spur GCC into serious discussions.
Although meetings have been diarised for the year now that the appeal has been dropped we don’t believe it should take a year to sort settlement. Implementing a new JES may take longer but that’s a different issue.
I still don’t think we call for strike ballot - YET , but it might come to that. Let’s see how the council reacts to our proposals and then take stock. Needless to say the council have been warned.
Now I need to stop banging my head on that brick wall. It hurts.
Stefan Cross
'Got to Go', Glasgow! (11/02/18)
Glasgow City Council's WPBR pay scheme has 'got to go' which is the key message behind this motion I've drafted for discussion and debate with local councillors and other Glasgow politicians.
Now the WPBR has already been characterised as 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, and it's easy to see how three senior judges came to their unanimous decision because the scheme:
- the NSWP 37 hour 'rule' discriminates against the council's largely female workforce
- the City Council's overtime working arrangements blatantly favour traditional male dominated jobs
- Home Carers, for example, are issued with separate 'plain time' contracts for additional hours worked
- the city council's Employee Development Commitment was not made available to any of the female dominated claimant jobs
In essence, the WPBR simply repackages the pay discrimination inherent in the city council's previous pay structures and the end result that former bonus earning, male dominated jobs retain their place in the pay 'pecking order'.
Previous pay differentials have been disguised and camouflaged, but the old order is still in place.
Meanwhile, senior council officials say they cannot explain the costs of the WPBR or the mysterious circumstances surrounding the procurement of the scheme by an external consultant - Hays HR Consulting and a consultant named Steve Watson.
So spread the word far and wide - no 'ifs', 'buts' or 'maybes' the unfit for purpose WPBR has got to go.
Glasgow's 'Unfit For Purpose' WPBR.
"Glasgow City Council accepts with the unanimous judgment of the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, that its Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR) is 'unfit for purpose'.
"Council therefore instructs senior officials to replace the WPBR scheme, as a matter of urgency, to bring to an end discriminatory practices which treat its low paid women workers as second class citizens.
"Council further instructs senior officials to draw up plans for using the Gauge job evaluation scheme (JES) as a replacement for the WPBR.
"Council notes that the Gauge JES was originally recommended for use by the Scottish council employers via COSLA and the national trade unions (GMB, Unison and Unite), as part of the landmark 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement."
Glasgow - Equal Pay Update (08/02/18)
Charles Dickens wrote about the Circumlocution Office in his famous book 'Little Dorrit' way back in the 1850s, but the same bureaucratic mentality seems to hold sway in the minds of senior officials in Glasgow City Council who appear to be doing their level best to frustrate and delay meaningful negotiations to end the council's long-running equal pay dispute.
The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.
This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.
This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Now the views of the Council Leader Susan Aitken couldn't be clearer, but the behaviour of senior officials stands in stark contrast as they fight to hold onto a a completely discredited WPBR pay scheme which has been characterised by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, as 'unfit for purpose'.
So it seems to me that the same officials who brought in the WPBR, under mysterious and unexplained circumstances, are now trying to circumvent the will of the council's leadership.
And that can't be allowed to happen because these bureaucrats are acting as both judge and jury in their own cause.
Susan Slates the Naysayers (02/02/18)
Good for her, I say.
What a difference from the negative, cheeseparing attitude of previous Labour council leaders who proclaimed their great support for equal pay while presiding over pay arrangements which blatantly favoured traditional male jobs.
And while I'm on my high horse aren't people disgusted at the former senior official who has been telling The Times that equal pay represents a significant threat to council jobs and services!
If 'Mr Anonymous' would like to step out of the shadows, I'd be happy to debate the issues with him publicly including the advice he gave to the Labour council leader, Stephen Purcell, in 2005 over the introduction of the now widely discredited Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR).
A short thread on equal pay. Lots of inaccurate claims being made, so a few points of fact follow.
The £500m bill figure that is being widely quoted is pure speculation at this stage. The final settlement will be established through negotiations - that’s what they’re for - and no one yet knows what the figure will be.
The final bill for the Council will probably be substantial - we’re prepared for that. But the City Government does not believe it has to be ‘catastrophic’ or that we will have to have a fire sale of assets or make substantial cuts or job losses.
Funding any settlement will be extremely challenging but other local authorities have done it, without making huge cuts. We will explore all the financial options available to us and minimise the impact on jobs and services.
I have consistently said this issue is of Glasgow City Council’s making and it is ours to solve. We will NOT and have not asked for a loan or a bailout from either the Scottish or UK govts. We will seek advice and support to find innovative funding solutions.
The bottom line is that the SNP City Government believes that gender inequality and discrimination are not a price worth paying to spare difficulty and expense.
Resolving equal pay in Glasgow is about equality, fairness and good governance. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ll get there.
