Glasgow's Jellyfish 'Pay Monster'

More revelations will follow later today about Glasgow's Jellyfish 'Pay Monster' which I wrote about earlier this month.

I have to admit I find it astonishing that Glasgow's most senior officials were taken in by this Jellyfish nonsense and not just because they are (and were) all very well paid, experienced and should have known better.

But the most important reason is that the Glasgow is Scotland's largest council, by far, and its senior officials consider themselves to be at the very top of the class in Scottish local government - the head boys and girls, you could say.

Yet here we are with a WPBR pay scheme for which senior officials claim to have no proper records and which has ben condemned by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, as 'unfit for purpose'. 

What a joke.

 

Glasgow's Jellyfish 'Pay Monster' (06/03/18)

If I were to tell you that the 'architect' of Glasgow's thoroughly discredited WPBR pay scheme once compared Equal Pay to a Jelly Fish, what would you think?

Would your reaction be: "How interesting" or would it be more along the lines of "How can anyone spout such rubbish?" 

Well here's an extract of an article written by a chap called Steve Watson who worked for Hays HR Consulting back in 2007.

"Managing the Jelly Fish 
"Equal Pay is like a jelly fish; straightforward in concept, slow, and gender neutral. A somewhat amorphous body that has long and difficult to see tentacles. A jellyfish will ponderously seek its prey out, sting, immobilise and draw it into the fleshy translucent centre to feed. However, jellyfish are not inherently dangerous to humans although it is best to be wary of the obvious dangers. Live and let live. Biodiversity." 

Now Steve is credited, if that's the correct word, with devising the WPBR and its complex 'rules' along with the City Council's senior officials.

Although it's fair to say that the City Council's officials have recently gone all 'shy' about their involvement with and responsibility for the WPBR, perhaps because it has been condemned as 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court.

I've never seen the word Jellyfish spilled as two separate words before, I have to admit, but I've never come across a pay scheme as useless and discriminatory as Glasgow's WPBR either.

Yet the City Council's senior officials say they can explain the cost of the WPBR, the terms of reference for the WPBR or how the WPBR was procured back in 2005/06/07.

I'll be sharing more equal pay insights from 'Managing the Jelly Fish' later today - so watch this space!