Hold Your Horses, Glasgow!
The Evening Times trumpeted the other day that a new pay and grading scheme has been agreed for Glasgow City Council workers.
But 'hold your horses' would be a more appropriate headline because all Glasgow has really done is to agree to adopt a new job evaluation scheme (JES) which would form the basis of a new pay and grading structure - which is two or possibly three years away.
The important point to note is that a new Job Evaluation Scheme (JES) is not a miracle cure and although the Scottish Joint Council (SJC) scheme is better than most - it's how the scheme is used that's really important.
For example, North Lanarkshire Council used the SJC scheme but council managers manipulated the results so that Home Care jobs ended up on much worse grades and lower pay than they deserved.
The behaviour of council managers in North Lanarkshire was finally exposed by Daphne Romney, the QC who represented A4ES clients at a long-running Employment Tribunal which found in the claimants favour.
But if this can happen in North Lanarkshire, why not Glasgow where senior officials including the chief executive have been defending the council's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme for years?
https://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/16980178.new-pay-and-grading-system-agreed-for-glasgow-city-council-workers/
New pay and grading system agreed for Glasgow City Council workers
Female public sector workers moved a step closer to equal pay after city chiefs agreed to adopt a new wage grading system.
Glasgow City Council has been locked in talks with unions and lawyers to settle equal pay disputes all linked to the Workforce Pay and Benefits Review system, which was originally introduced in 2006 to tackle gender pay gaps.
It has been argued that the WPBR policy discriminated against women as female-dominated jobs such as caring received less than male-dominated areas, including cleansing.
Susan Aitken, the leader of the council, said: “We agreed to abandon the current WPBR pay and grading scheme adopted in 2006 and replace it with a new scheme. We instructed officers to look at a number of potential options and select a scheme they thought was more appropriate for Glasgow City Council to adopt.”
Ms Aitken said that with the new system there would be “winners and losers” but that there had been equality proofing surveys carried out to ensure fairness across the genders.
She also admitted that full implementation of the scheme could take up to three years.
Ms Aitken added: “The equality proofing part of it was important so the scheme is the least challengeable and will deliver the most equality in terms of gender pay.
“For everyone’s sake, I would hope to have this implemented sooner rather than later because clearly, while WPBR has not been found to be discriminatory by the courts, it has come under such challenge, I have no confidence that it would pass a test had it got that far in the courts.”
The new scheme was welcomed by members across the political parties.
Labour group leader Frank McAveety said: “We have to find real solutions that are robust should the law change. We need a system that tackles that issue fundamentally. I welcome the speed we’ve arrived at this stage.”
And Allan Young, Co-convenor of the Green Councillors Group, added: “The decision to adopt the job evaluation scheme used by most Scottish councils is a welcome step.
“Tthe Greens were clear that we had no confidence in the council’s previous scheme and it must be replaced.
“The priority now must be to get everyone back to negotiations and ensure we get a fair equal pay settlement for those who have lost out for so long.”
Glasgow - Message From/To Annemarie (12/10/18)
Here's the latest 'Message from Annemarie' announcing to the council workforce that, at long last, a new pay and grading scheme has been approved for Glasgow City Council.
Now I know a lot about this subject because one of the last things I did, back in the late 1990s, in my role as Unison's Head of Local Government in Scotland was to agree a 'bespoke' job evaluation scheme (JES) which the trade unions and COSLA jointly recommended all 32 Scottish councils to use as part of the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.
The Scottish Joint Council JES cost a whacking great £250,000 to develop and individual councils had to chip in with their share which in Glasgow's case was around £25,000 if I remember correctly.
But Glasgow never used the Scottish Joint Council JES scheme and I presume on the advice of its senior officials (given that elected councillors certainly had no expertise in this area), the City Council took the fateful decision to devise its own, in-house' and ultimately disastrous WPBR scheme.
Fast forward to 2018 and Glasgow is now taking a decision which the Council should have taken 20 years ago - but at considerably more time, cost and public expense.
In the intervening period, the City Council's lowest paid workers, predominantly though not exclusively female, have been treated as 'second class citizens' for years, having lost out substantially both in terms of their pay and pension rights.
If you ask me, Glasgow's equal pay claimants are due a fulsome apology and this should come from the council's senior officials - not just the politicians - because it's obvious that highly paid, 'professional' officers bear a big share of the responsibility for this terrible mess.
Subject: New pay and grading scheme approved
New pay and grading scheme approved
In June the council agreed to abandon the Workforce Pay and Benefits Review pay and grading scheme and agree a suitable alternative, in consultation with trade unions and equal pay claimants’ representatives. Today the City Administration Committee approved the use of the Scottish Joint Council Job Evaluation Scheme, Third Edition. This scheme is used by the majority of Scottish councils.
The Job Evaluation Working Group, a sub-group of the Equal Pay Negotiating Group, made up of council officers, claimants’ representatives and trade unions prepared the recommendations for committee and you can read the full report here.
The group will now meet to develop a detailed implementation plan.
At this point, it is not possible to say what the effect of this new scheme will be on individuals. However we do know that everyone working for Glasgow City Council, excluding teachers, will be affected by this. This is because all jobs will need to be evaluated against the criteria in the new scheme and then appropriate grading and pay agreed and applied.
How we do the job evaluations will be agreed as part of the implementation plan. But I want to be clear with everyone that this won’t happen overnight and we won’t know how this affects everyone individually until the job evaluation process is complete.
I also want to remind you that the reason we are doing this is to make sure that everyone is paid equally for equal work in the future.
I will be in touch again to tell you all about the plan to implement the scheme. As part of the plan we will make sure that you have ways to give your views and find out information about the job evaluation process.
In the meantime you can send questions to ask Annemarie but do keep in mind that I can’t give any more details about individual circumstances.
Regards,
Annemarie O’Donnell
Chief Executive
Glasgow's Fight for Equal Pay (27/10/18)
Here's a good article by Dani Garavelli in Scotland on Sunday which gets to the heart of next week's strike and the long fight for equal pay in Glasgow City Council.
Well said, if you ask me and all I would add is that Glasgow’s equal pay claimants are not interested in the political ‘ding dong’ - they know the history of the fight for equal pay very well.
The real issue is the Council’s refusal to get down to the ‘serious negotiations’ that were promised months ago on crucial issues such as the comparators to be used in deciding compensation.
One factual point - Glasgow City Council has not yet agreed a new pay and grading scheme to replace the 'unfit for purpose' WPBR.
What the Council has agreed is to introduce a new job evaluation scheme (JES) to replace the old WPBR and this process will help establish a new pay and grading structure further down the line.
But the new Scottish Joint Council JES is not a miracle cure because this scheme was used previously in North Lanarkshire Council and the results were 'manipulated' by senior council managers to the disadvantage of female dominated jobs such as Home Carers.
Action 4 Equality Scotland legal team, led by the indomitable Daphne Romney QC, drove a 'coach and horses' through the North Lanarkshire version of the Scottish Joint Council scheme at the Glasgow Employment Tribunals which led to a settlement of the outstanding equal pay claims.
Dani Garavelli: Remember who caused mess as Glasgow women strike
Glasgow City Council workers at the launch of a poster backing their cause in George Square, last week. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA
By DANI GARAVELLI - Scotland on Sunday
Who would want to be in the shoes of the SNP leadership of Glasgow City Council right now? Its 18 months in control of the country’s biggest local authority has seen it firefighting – in the case of the Glasgow School of Art, literally – a succession of crises, most of which were not of its own making.
This is not to suggest those at the helm have not made mistakes; there are questions to be asked about the way business owners in Sauchiehall Street were treated in the wake of that blaze, for example; but it is also true that the stars have aligned against them. Yet their rivals continue to capitalise on their inability to resolve problems previous Labour-led administrations ignored (and sometimes exacerbated) for the best part of two decades.
Later this week, Glasgow services will be severely affected as Unison and GMB members take part in what is being billed as the biggest equal pay strike ever seen in the UK. More than 8,000 workers, mostly women who work in catering, cleaning and caring, will forsake their posts for 48 hours in an attempt to force the council to settle their claims.
It’s a historic moment. Not since the 1915 rent strikes have the city’s women come together in such numbers to face down injustice; and an injustice has certainly been done. These low-paid workers – the city’s linchpins – have been cheated out of their rightful earnings for most of their working lives. And now, when a resolution appeared to be in sight, the process has stalled again. According to Action 4 Equality Scotland, which represents most of the women, 10 months after the SNP-led administration began negotiations, the issue of comparators has still not been resolved. Add to that a deterioration in the working conditions of homecarers, and it is easy to see why anger has boiled over. I have nothing but admiration for the way these women are fighting their corner.
At the same time, I can’t help feeling a degree of sympathy towards the SNP councillors now under attack from the very same unions and politicians whose refusal to recognise the value of women’s work led to the accruing of a £500 million-plus debt.
It was the decision in 2006 by the then Labour administration to implement a discriminatory pay and grades structure, and the decision of later ones to oppose the women’s consequent pay claims, that created this shambles.
Those decisions were facilitated (some would say driven) by male-dominated unions, including the GMB, which were all too happy to see their male workers’ pay and bonuses protected.
When the SNP took control last year, it accepted the women had been underpaid and pledged to resolve the claims, even though it understood the issue would cast a shadow over its first term and potentially deprive it of a second.
It may well be true, as Action 4 Equality claims, that it is failing to deliver on that pledge. The organisation says the council officers leading the negotiations – the very same council officers who advised previous administrations not to settle – are still proving uncooperative.
And yet, the SNP has achieved three major goals: it ended the court action, it brought Cordia, the arms-length organisation for homecarers , back in-house and it scrapped the discredited pay and grades scheme and replaced it with a new one.
I am not cynical enough to suggest the GMB is only standing up for female members now because the SNP is in charge, though there were no equal pay strikes under Labour; I prefer to believe it has more to do with the fact that the union now has two women – Rhea Wolfson (the Labour candidate for Livingston) and Hazel Nolan – as regional organisers.
In any case, it would be a strange thing to criticise a trade union for finally doing its job. But I do think some humility on the part of both the GMB and Unison, which was also slow to offer support, would be welcome. As for those Labour politicians attacking the SNP administration over equal pay: they are shameless and must take us all for fools. Do they really think our attention spans are so short?
Dani Garavelli: Remember who caused mess as Glasgow women strike
Glasgow City Council workers at the launch of a poster backing their cause in George Square, last week. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA
By DANI GARAVELLI - Scotland on Sunday
Who would want to be in the shoes of the SNP leadership of Glasgow City Council right now? Its 18 months in control of the country’s biggest local authority has seen it firefighting – in the case of the Glasgow School of Art, literally – a succession of crises, most of which were not of its own making.
This is not to suggest those at the helm have not made mistakes; there are questions to be asked about the way business owners in Sauchiehall Street were treated in the wake of that blaze, for example; but it is also true that the stars have aligned against them. Yet their rivals continue to capitalise on their inability to resolve problems previous Labour-led administrations ignored (and sometimes exacerbated) for the best part of two decades.
Later this week, Glasgow services will be severely affected as Unison and GMB members take part in what is being billed as the biggest equal pay strike ever seen in the UK. More than 8,000 workers, mostly women who work in catering, cleaning and caring, will forsake their posts for 48 hours in an attempt to force the council to settle their claims.
It’s a historic moment. Not since the 1915 rent strikes have the city’s women come together in such numbers to face down injustice; and an injustice has certainly been done. These low-paid workers – the city’s linchpins – have been cheated out of their rightful earnings for most of their working lives. And now, when a resolution appeared to be in sight, the process has stalled again. According to Action 4 Equality Scotland, which represents most of the women, 10 months after the SNP-led administration began negotiations, the issue of comparators has still not been resolved. Add to that a deterioration in the working conditions of homecarers, and it is easy to see why anger has boiled over. I have nothing but admiration for the way these women are fighting their corner.
At the same time, I can’t help feeling a degree of sympathy towards the SNP councillors now under attack from the very same unions and politicians whose refusal to recognise the value of women’s work led to the accruing of a £500 million-plus debt.
It was the decision in 2006 by the then Labour administration to implement a discriminatory pay and grades structure, and the decision of later ones to oppose the women’s consequent pay claims, that created this shambles.
Those decisions were facilitated (some would say driven) by male-dominated unions, including the GMB, which were all too happy to see their male workers’ pay and bonuses protected.
When the SNP took control last year, it accepted the women had been underpaid and pledged to resolve the claims, even though it understood the issue would cast a shadow over its first term and potentially deprive it of a second.
It may well be true, as Action 4 Equality claims, that it is failing to deliver on that pledge. The organisation says the council officers leading the negotiations – the very same council officers who advised previous administrations not to settle – are still proving uncooperative.
And yet, the SNP has achieved three major goals: it ended the court action, it brought Cordia, the arms-length organisation for homecarers , back in-house and it scrapped the discredited pay and grades scheme and replaced it with a new one.
I am not cynical enough to suggest the GMB is only standing up for female members now because the SNP is in charge, though there were no equal pay strikes under Labour; I prefer to believe it has more to do with the fact that the union now has two women – Rhea Wolfson (the Labour candidate for Livingston) and Hazel Nolan – as regional organisers.
In any case, it would be a strange thing to criticise a trade union for finally doing its job. But I do think some humility on the part of both the GMB and Unison, which was also slow to offer support, would be welcome. As for those Labour politicians attacking the SNP administration over equal pay: they are shameless and must take us all for fools. Do they really think our attention spans are so short?
