Glasgow's Fight for Equal Pay

Here's a baldy bearded chap from the Scottish Family Party (SFP) who doesn't just have his face on upside down - he also doesn't have a clue what he's talking about when it comes to equal pay.

Because this all happened once before, of course, back in 2005 and at that time Glasgow City Council insisted it had no problem with unequal pay before moving with undue haste to make cash offers to 'buy out' people's equal pay claims with poor offers of settlement in the run up to Christmas 2005.

Albeit at a considerable price return since the employees who accepted these 'buy out' offers (set at a maximum of £9,000) had to give up their right to take their claim to an Employment Tribunal.  

The Council then announced it was going to bring in brand new, non-discriminatory pay arrangements with the aid of external consultants; the process was overseen by the City Council's most senior officials and led to the introduction of the WPBR (Workforce Pay and Benefits Review) in January 2007. 

Some of the best brains in Glasgow assured the workforce that the WPBR was the 'real deal' and that the scheme had finally ended the scourge of gender-based pay discrimination in Scotland's largest council.

Which was load of old bollix, of course, as A4ES (Action 4 Equality Scotland) said at the time - read my blog site archive and see for yourself.

What the Council did was to dupe its largely female workforce by manipulating the rules of the WPBR with new discriminatory pay practices such as the 37 hour 'rule' which blatantly favoured traditional male jobs.

The Council's senior officials who procured, implemented and managed the WPBR scheme continued to defend its pay practices all the way to the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, until in August 2017 three senior judges unanimously condemned the WPBR as 'unfit for purpose'.

Glasgow City Council appealed this decision, but lost to yet another unanimous decision in December 2017 when three judges refused the Council's application to take its case to the UK Supreme Court in London.

In January 2018 the Council finally agreed, on a cross-party basis, to negotiate and end to this long-running dispute by compensating the predominantly, but not exclusively, female workers who have lost out on 12 years of pay and pensions as a result of the WPBR - and by replacing the WPBR with new, non-discriminatory pay arrangements.

Sounds a bit like a Scottish local government version of 'Groundhog Day', I know, but there you are.

The Council now accepts that a final settlement will run to 'hundreds of millions of pounds, but so far no one has said 'SORRY!' for this terrible scandal and not one senior Council official has been properly held to account.