Glasgow's Great Equal Pay Cover Up

One year ago today - an important blog post highlighting the fight taking place behind the scenes to uncover the truth about Glasgow's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme.


  

Glasgow's Great Equal Pay Cover-Up (31/10/18)

In the days ahead I plan to share details of my FOI requests to Glasgow City Council over its 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme and the role played by senior officials who oversaw the scheme's introduction back in 2006/07.

Council bosses now claim that it's too troublesome and too costly to provide this information, i.e. more than £600, but if you ask me the workforce and the taxpayer are entitled to know what exactly went on and how Scotland's largest council got itself into this terrible mess.  

So this is a important campaign issue on which I hope to get cross party support from the SNP, Labour, Green and Conservative groups in Glasgow City Council. 

  

Glasgow's Great Equal Pay Cover-Up (30/10/18)

Here's a letter I sent to Susan Aitken recently regarding the role played by senior council officials when Glasgow's WPBR pay scheme was introduced back in 2006/07.

The council's chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell, has claimed previously that senior officials acted in 'good faith' over the WPBR and that their aim was to eliminate gender-based pay discrimination by the introduction of this controversial pay scheme.

Now I find this hard to very believe because, as I've said on the blog site many times, a 'two-year-old' could tell you that the WPBR's 37 hour rule was designed to favour male jobs and to disadvantage Glasgow's predominantly female workforce.

For the very simple reason that the vast majority of women workers in Glasgow City Council are contracted to work less than 37 hours a week.

After a series of freedom of information (FOI) requests it turns out that the 'history' of the WPBR is contained in a set of three filing cabinets, yet senior officials refuse to release the details on the grounds that to do so would cost the Council more than £600. 

If you ask me, the real reason my FOI requests are being refused is that the contents of these filing cabinet cabinets will show that senior officials betrayed the interests of the Council's lowest paid workers. 

I would like an answer to a whole series of important questions including:

• What were the Terms of Reference for the WPBR?
• How was the WPBR commissioned and was the brief put out to commercial tender?
• Why did the Council not use the Scottish Joint Council scheme recommended by COSLA and the Trade Unions?
• What was the total cost of the WPBR?
• Who 'signed off' on the key provisions of the WPBR? 

My FOI battle with the City Council is still taking place behind the scenes and I have already raised some of these issues with the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC).

But I think the time has come to involve a wider audience in this fight - the Claimants, Glasgow City Councillors, Glasgow MSPs, Glasgow MPs, Press and Media and the wider public.

Because the way in which Scotland's largest council has dealt with Equal Pay is a huge public scandal which is going to cost Glasgow hundreds of millions of pounds.

So there is no way that the people directly responsible should be allowed to brush this terrible mess under the carpet.  

  

Dear Councillor Aitken

Glasgow's WPBR and the role of senior council officials

I refer to my letter dated 11 July 2018.

I have not had any response to my letter, from yourself or someone from your office, which is disappointing, I have to say.

The important issue at stake is whether senior council officials acted in 'good faith' over the WPBR which, as you know, was introduced in 2007 but subsequently judged by the Court of Session to be 'unfit for purpose' in August 2017, after a lengthy legal battle.

In turn, the role played by senior officials has implications for the settlement discussions with the Council which have not resulted in serious negotiations to end this long-running dispute, despite 9 months of talks and 21 separate meetings with the claimants' representatives (A4ES, GMB and Unison).

In the circumstances, I plan to share this letter on my blog site along with an explanation of why professional oversight (or lack of it) of the WPBR is such an important issue for Glasgow's equal pay claimants. 

While responsibility for the WPBR rests ultimately with the Council's elected politicians, and with previous Council administrations, I think it is entirely fair to question why such a blatantly discriminatory provision as the 37 hour 'rule', for example, was not challenged by senior officials who claim that their sole aim in introducing the WPBR was to eliminate gender based pay discrimination.

To my mind, the only way to resolve this question is by reviewing the WPBR advice given by senior officials at the time and how this advice was presented to the political leadership of the Council back in 2006/07. 

I am happy to delay any public comment for another week in case you would like to discuss the situation and, unless otherwise agreed, I would regard such a discussion as 'private and confidential'.

Kind regards

Mark     

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Irvine <markirvine@compuserve.com>
To: susan.aitken <susan.aitken@glasgow.gov.uk>
Sent: Wed, Jul 11, 2018 11:39 am
Subject: Glasgow's WPBR and the role of senior council officials

11 July 2018

Dear Councillor Aitken

Glasgow's WPBR and the role of senior council officials

I have been trying for several months, via a series of FOI requests, to understand the role played by senior officials during the introduction of the Glasgow City Council's WPBR pay scheme.

While much of the work was undertaken by an external consultant, crucial aspects of the WPBR, for example the introduction of the scheme's controversial 37 hour 'rule', still had to be approved by the City Council on the advice of its senior officials.

The Council's chief executive has stated publicly that senior officials acted in 'good faith' at the time which I find had to accept because the 37 hour 'rule' was clearly designed to disadvantage the Council's largely female workforce.   

Instead of responding helpfully to my FOI requests the process in Glasgow has become something of a pantomime with senior officials arguing that the time and cost of providing me with this information falls foul of section 12 (1) of FOISA.

I enclose the latest response from the chief executive's department which claims that to index the contents of three filing cabinets (which contain the relevant WPBR data) would take 83 hours to complete - or 1.3 working days for each of the 9 filing cabinet drawers.

I have to say I find this kind if behaviour to be completely at odds with the City Council's official policy of becoming a world leader in respect of the openness and transparency of its decision-making.

I did not ask the Council to conduct a full-scale, archivist-led indexing exercise which ought to have been completed years ago, of course. Instead I asked the Council to describe the contents of the three filing cabinets for the purposes of responding to a perfectly simple FOI Request/Review Request.

So I have a proposal to make which is that as Council Leader you authorise me to have access to the 3 filing cabinets for the period of 1 (one) working day which would allow me sufficient time to assess the information held by the Council.

If I believe there is important WPBR information that should be brought into the public domain, I would submit an FOI request in the normal way which would allow the Council to consider any privacy or other issues arising from such a request.

Not only will this save the Council from doing the job itself, it will also save the Council a great deal of time and expense by avoiding a protracted FOI battle which I am confident of winning eventually, because this is clearly the sort of information that ought to be readily available to members of the public.

No matter how long it takes - the truth will out in the end, as they say.

I would also take this opportunity to point out that while the chief executive's department has repeatedly declined to answer my WPBR FOI requests on the grounds that providing this information would cost the Council more than £600 - the chief executive herself, Annemarie O'Donnell, recently decided to 'gift' £120,079 to the Council's outgoing director of finance, Lynn Brown, so that this fellow senior official could access her local government pension early.

The generosity shown towards a former senior official stands in stark contrast to the Council's treatment of its lowest paid staff over many years which is why I believe it is right and proper to shine a light on the actions of senior officials in relation to the WPBR.

I look forward to your reply and would be grateful if you could respond to me by email at: markirvine@compuserve.com

Kind regards

Mark Irvine