Glasgow and Job Evaluation
Glasgow City Council has drafted in some new faces to help dig the council out of its equal pay problems.
For example, Rosie Docherty has been brought on board as an external adviser on job evaluation and as regular readers know, Rosie has featured on the blog site before over the nefarious goings on at North Lanarkshire Council (NLC).
North Lanarkshire actually used the Scottish Joint Council job evaluation scheme (JES) which was jointly recommended by COSLA and the national trade unions although the SJC scheme, on its own, was never a guarantee of success.
Because the council's senior management manipulated the scores and results of the JES (behind closed doors) which meant that many female dominated jobs received far lower grades and pay than comparable male jobs.
Same old story, I'm afraid, but the good news is that North Lanarkshire's shenanigans were exposed by Daphne Romney QC who acted for the A4ES clients at a long-running Employment Tribunal in Glasgow.
In effect, Daphne drove a coach and horses through the Council's application of the Scottish Joint Council job evaluation scheme scheme and the way in which the JES was applied to female dominated groups such as Home Carers.
Way back in 2006 Rosie Doherty was drafted in by North Lanarkshire to conduct an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) - an exercise designed to test that an employer's pay arrangements have eliminated gender discrimination and treat male and female dominated jobs equally.
Incredible as it seems North Lanarkshire's Equality Impact Assessment gave its new (2006) pay arrangements a clean bill of health and it took years of battling through the tribunals to expose what had really gone on.
So Rosie Docherty's re-appearance as an external JES adviser to Glasgow City Council is an interesting development to say the least - and this could be good news or it could be bad news, as far as the ongoing settlement negotiations are concerned.
If you ask me, this will depend on whether Glasgow is approaching settlement on the basis of what the Council says it can afford - or on the basis of the pay and pensions people have actually lost from working under the 'unfit for purpose' WPBR for the past 12 years.
North Lanarkshire Update (19/05/15)
I wrote the other day about the process for re-evaluating various council jobs that now appears to be underway in North Lanarkshire.
Now I don't know this chap Ian Brewster who has apparently been appointed as an independent person who will oversee the process, but there was someone with the same name who acted a member of the Job Analyst Team back in 1999 which helped to adapt the UK 'Gauge' Job Evaluation Scheme (JES) for use in Scotland.
At that time Ian Brewster worked in the Personnel Department of South Ayrshire Council and the Job Analyst Team reported to the Technical Adviser and Project Manager, a woman named Rosie Docherty.
Regular readers will remember that Rosie Docherty was invited by North Lanarkshire's head of personnel, Iris Wylie, to carry out the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) demanded by the trade unions back in 2006.
And the EIA proved to be pretty useless if you ask me, because it failed to look at the huge differences in pay between male and female jobs after new pay arrangements were introduced in 2007.
So what was the point of the Equality Impact Assessment?
Not a lot, as far as I can see, but I wonder if the Ian Brewster who was involved in the COSLA JES exercise back in 1999 is the same Ian Brewster whom North Lanarkshire have appointed to oversee this further re-evaluation in 2015.
Now you would think that this information would be on the Council's web site for all to see, along with details of how the appointment was made, what terms of reference have been agreed and by whom.
Yet no one seems to know, or if they do know they're not sharing the information with the Council workforce which doesn't bode too well for the future.
North Lanarkshire Update (28/04/15)
Here's the letter from North Lanarkshire's head of human resources, Iris Wylie, which was only made public after a long battle with the Council and an 'order' to release the document following a decision by the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC).
Now if you ask me the intervention of SIC was completely unnecessary, because this kind of information ought to be freely available to anyone who asks for it, especially the workforce in North Lanarkshire whose jobs and livelihoods were being affected by decisions that were being taken behind closed doors.
The crux of the issues is that the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) was supposed to ensure that the Council's new pay arrangements were fair, objective and no longer discriminated against predominantly female jobs.
But as everyone now knows that is not what happened and the new NLC pay arrangements introduced in 2007 continued to favour traditional male council jobs which is astonishing, I have to admit.
Even more astonishing is the fact that the Council has not instigated an investigation to discover how this happened and report its findings to elected councillors - and the workforce, of course.
Gerry Crawley, by the way, is or at least was a regional officer (full-time official) with Unison and I'm sure that all of these issues, and more, were discussed in great detail by the local trade unions.
More to follow in the days ahead, but the big question for the workforce in NLC to ponder is:
"If this could happen once, what's to stop it from happening all over again?"
"If this could happen once, what's to stop it from happening all over again?"
North Lanarkshire Update (09/02/15)
I promised to share the letter from North Lanarkshire's head of personnel services setting out the terms of reference for an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Council's new pay proposals back in 2006.
Now it's pretty clear that this EIA didn't do the trick because what we've ended up in North Lanarkshire with is a 'dog's dinner' of a mess and more equal pay claims that you can shake a stick at.
I will have more to say on the contents of the letter in the days ahead, but in the meantime here is what the Council wanted to prevent people from seeing - a letter from Iris Wylie (now head of human resources) to Gerry Crawley of Unison.
From: Head of Personnel Services
Sent: 07 March 2006 12.10
To: 'g.crawley@unison.co.uk'
Cc: Chief Executive; Director of Administration; Dinwoodie Linda; Selkirk Brian
Subject: JOB EVALUATION - EQUALITY IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Gerry,
The Chief Executive has passed to me a copy of your e-mail of 6 March, 2006 in response to the Council's final offer. You have confirmed your request for an Equality Impact Assessment to be carried out by the Council with a jointly agreed independent pay expert being commissioned to undertake this assessment.
You have not specified the areas you would wish to have covered in the impact assessment. Could I suggest that the Equality Impact Assessment focus on the following areas:-
- for the pay model overall, identify the number of males and females who are green, white and red circles as well as the proportionate percentages
- within each of the 18 grades within pay model NLC 5C, identify the number of males and females within each grade as well as the proportionate percentages
- within each grade identify the number of males and females who are green circles i.e. moving up the rank order as well as the proportionate percentages
- within each grade identify the number of males and females who are red circles i.e. moving down the rank order as well as the proportionate percentages
- identify predominantly male or predominantly female jobs in the existing grading structure and confirm how they move within the new evaluated rank order of jobs i.e. upwards or downwards
- check whether any predominantly female jobs are close ti the upper boundary of a grade
- check whether any predominantly male jobs are close to the lower boundary of a grade
From the discussions which you had involving John O'Hagan, Director of Administration, last week I understand that Rosie Docherty, consultant to the Cosla Job Evaluation Consortium would be an acceptable independent expert to undertake this work. I should be grateful to receive your confirmation and I shall then engage Rosie to undertake the work specified above.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Iris
