Glasgow - Listen to the Claimants
Here's an interesting Twitter exchange I became involved in the other day with Mhairi Hunter, a Glasgow councillor, and Mark Martin, an equal pay claimant from Glasgow.
Now I don't know Mark Martin, but he made a number of very valid points if you ask me, including the one about the Council's senior officials having a conflict of interest.
Because the same group of senior officials who introduced the WPBR are still defending its cockamamy practices including the 37 hour 'rule' which was designed to discriminate against the Council's largely female workforce.
The same is true of other aspects of the WPBR pay scheme, overtime working for example, and the less generally less favourable terms and conditions imposed on Cordia employees for years - compared to their colleagues in other parts of the 'Council Family'.
Mhairi Hunter does not explain what she means by 'misinformation', but it is wrong to say that settlement negotiations in other Scottish councils took 12 to 18 months.
I know how long settlement negotiations took in other Scottish councils because I was involved in them, as part of the A4ES team
If senior officials are telling Glasgow councillors that settlement negotiations in other Scottish councils all took 12 to 18 months, no wonder things are moving so slowly - because they are wrong.
But what this does is to highlight the need for Glasgow's political leaders to be speaking directly with the claimants' representatives and not to take as 'gospel' everything they hear from Council officials.
At the moment the only source of information to councillors seems to be the same group of senior officials who assured previous administrations that the WPBR was as 'sound as a pound' and that the Council would easily win the battle at the Court of Session over the WPBR.
Now this proved to be extremely bad advice, yet the same officials who gave this advice to the last Labour council now appear to be giving the same general advice to the SNP administration which assumed control of Glasgow City Council in May 2017.
So the moral of the story is for senior councillors to listen to the claimants and their representatives - instead of relying 100% on what their officials have to say.
Because officials are not just reversing previous decisions such as the decision to create Cordia and other ALEOs - officials are actually re-writing history by proclaiming Cordia as a great success story.
While glossing over the fact that Cordia was set up to help the City Council wriggle out of its obligations on equal pay and that Cordia has been treating its largely female workforce as 'second class citizens' for years.
- I've emptied the bins. - Mhairi Hunter
Did you know that the only thing stopping and holding up the women of gcc getting there equal pay after 10+years are yes you guessed it WOMEN? Chief exec /director of governance /leader gcc . And first minister as she could step in and force settlements or speed it up . -Mark Martin
Because we are not allowed to disclose details of negotiations. Similar cases have taken 12-18 months in other councils so if ppl are telling you it can be done quickly that is simply untrue.Mhairi Hunter
Similar cases in other councils have not taken 12 to 18 months - and if this is what senior officials are telling Glasgow councillors, it may help to explain why settlement negotiations in Glasgow are making so little progress.
No it's not a very fair point. Officers perform their roles under political direction. It was a political choice by Labour to create Cordia as an ALEO just as it is a political choice by the SNP to reverse that. - Mhairi Hunter
Are you saying that the political direction of councillors was responsible for Cordia treating its employees as second class members of the Glasgow Council Family? If so, the same logic must surely apply to the 'unfit for purpose' WPBR. - Mark Irvine
