Glasgow - Setting the Record Straight (21/08/18)

Here's an email from Susan Aitken, Glasgow City Council leader, which is being sent to claimants in response to enquiries about the recent breakdown in equal pay settlement negotiations.

Now I think I've been quite fair minded and generally positive about Susan Aitken in my blog posts on Glasgow and Equal Pay, but this latest message deserves to be challenged and the record set straight for the following reasons:

• All three of the Claimants Representatives (A4ES, GMB and Unison) are agreed that Glasgow City Council is going back on on its previous commitment to engage in a serious negotiating process.
• The legal process has not ended (as Susan claims) because all the outstanding cases are going back to the Glasgow Employment Tribunal in September - and the City Council is still defending and trying to justify its 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay arrangements.
• The Council is not 'fully committed' to the negotiating process because after 17 meetings not a single thing has been agreed in relation to the pay gap between male and female jobs which has operated under the 'unfit for purpose' WPBR for the past 12 years (and counting).
• Settlement proposals from the Claimants' Representatives were rejected out of hand without any 'negotiation' at all and no further 'negotiations' will take place until November 2018 while the Council works up its own plan.
• In other words the 'negotiations' are a joke and the Council Side is simply trying to impose its own views without any serious attempt to reach agreement on outstanding issues such as the size of the pay gap.
• Senior council officials deserve all the criticism they're getting because they have been defending the Council's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme since 2007 while urging the Council to continue its legal battle in the courts - previously the UK Supreme Court and now the Glasgow Employment Tribunals.

The curious thing is that while Susan Aitken says that officials are acting under her 'direct instruction' there has not been a serious discussion between the Claimants' Representatives and the Council's political leadership since the start of 2018.

So come on, Susan - how about listening to and engaging with the claimants and their representatives (A4ES, GMB and Unison) instead of swallowing whole everything your officials have to say?

Because the advice and counsel of senior officials has landed Glasgow City Council in the awful 'unfit for purpose' mess it finds itself in today.  

Susan Aitken
The claims that have been made by some of the claimants' representatives are incorrect. The Council, and the officers who sit on the negotiations on the Council's behalf and who act on my direct instructions, are fully committed to the negotiations. The claimants have put forward their initial proposal; the Council is now working on a response to that, which will form part of the negotiation and will be delivered within the timetable agreed to by all parties at the start of this process.

No-one from either side has ever been under any illusion this process would be quick and easy. These negotiations have at times been difficult and the entrenchment of the competing positions which has been the case for over a decade cannot be undone overnight. I regret that some elements of the claimants' representatives choose to conduct these negotiations in the press, making claims which are inaccurate and attacking individual officers.

On a personal level, I am constantly involved in this process. Glasgow is moving faster to resolve this issue that any Council before it. Since I became Leader, I have ended the legal challenge, put political oversight in place, established fortnightly formal negotiating meetings, brought Cordia - where most of the affected staff are employed - back into the Council, harmonising their terms and conditions, and taken the decision taken to replace the council’s entire pay and grading structure. Progress will continue until a resolution is complete.

Councillor Susan Aitken
Leader of the Council
SNP Councillor for Langside
0141 287 3751