First Minister and Equal Pay

Here's an excellent and heartfelt letter which a long-serving Home Carer has written to the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, about the fight for equal pay in Glasgow.

Dear Nicola.

As a woman working in a mainly dominated male environment and getting to the top slot in your chosen profession, I find it so frustrating to see the Scottish Parliament is allowing a long drawn out equal pay claim from GCC.

After having seen the salaries these officials are handing out to each other, what is the SNP going to do about a clear abuse of power in the biggest council in Scotland.

I have been a SNP voter since Margo Mcdonald won Govan in the 60s.

What powers if any, do the elected counsellors have in running GCC.

Having looked at the shambles the officials have created since 2005, if they were employed in the private sector they would have all been sacked for causing their company all the expense that was just disgraceful management in their part.

These officials who are giving themselves these massive pay rises plus pension increases are using the council as their own personal bank.

I have to wonder are there any grounds for the fraud squad to have a look at what they have been up to for years.

I would like to think that as the first minister you could do something to help out all these ordinary working women who are at an age where some of them have actually died awaiting a pay out from these council Oligarths.

So please please help us Nicola we need you.

YOURS SINCERELY

G

Existing Cordia Worker For 22yrs

Now I can't say that I see any grounds for the 'fraud squad' to intervene, but I do take G's well made point that if this had happened in the private sector some of the people involved in Glasgow's decade long equal pay scandal would have paid a heavy price by now.

So I hope G's letter will inspire others to contact their local councillors, MSPs and MPs in the run up to the next settlement meeting with the City Council on 22 May 2018.

Believe me politicians do take these kind of letters seriously and the more people who take the time and trouble to state their case honestly and sincerely - the better it will be for all concerned.

One suggestion I would make is that a group of equal pay claimants from Nicola Sturgeon's local constituency (Glasgow Southside) should get together and ask Nicola for a meeting as the local MSP.

I don't expect Nicola Sturgeon or any other Glasgow politician to barge in somewhere they don't belong.

But Glasgow's politicians are entitled to speak out on important issues on behalf of their local constituents including: 

1. Glasgow City Council's discredited WPBR  pay scheme which Scotland's highest civl court, the Court of Session, has condemned as 'unfit for purpose'
2. The WPBR's bogus 37 hour 'rule' which was deliberately designed to disadvantage female dominated jobs in Cordia and elsewhere within the Council
3. The nonsense of senior officials refusing to disclose vital information on the WPBR because this might cost Scotland's largest council more than £600. 

So let's hope that Nicola and other Glasgow politicians come off the fence, find their voice and start to speak up on behalf of local constituents who have been treated as second class citizens for years.