Glasgow City Council - Reinventing The Wheel

Glasgow City Council is trying to reinvent the wheel in equal pay settlement negotiations while trade union ballots on strike action are underway. 

The long-running dispute is due to return to the Glasgow Employment Tribunals next week.

Glasgow's Wrecking Tactics Over Equal Pay (January 21, 2022)

So not only is Glasgow City Council trying to wreck the latest round of equal pay settlement negotiations, GCC's lawyers are apparently preparing new defences which will argue the WPBR pay scheme is not discriminatory - even though it was judged to be 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland highest civil court, in 2017.    

Makes you wonder why the council agreed to a £500 million (partial) settlement of Glasgow's equal pay claims in 2019, if they're now saying that their WPBR scheme is not discriminatory.

Anyway, I think it's high time we heard from the SNP leader of Scotland's largest council, Susan Aitken, to explain what is going on.

  

GCC's Wrecking Tactics Over Equal Pay (August 24, 2021)

 

So the word from Glasgow is that senior council officials seem intent on wrecking the long awaited negotiations needed to secure a final settlement to its 15-year-old equal pay dispute. 

Instead of accepting the obvious and sensible proposal, from the Claimants representatives, to base a further settlement on the agreement reached in 2019 the SNP led council says it wants to 'reinvent the wheel' and start all over again.

Which is as daft as it sounds - a wrecking tactic, if you ask me.

Because the partial settlement of the dispute agreed in 2019 accepted that the council's WPBR pay arrangements (introduced in 2007) are 'unfit for purpose' and must be replaced by a completely new, non-discriminatory job evaluation scheme and pay structure. 

So the council's suggestion sounds like a cynical, time wasting, delaying tactic to kick the issue into the long grass - past next year's Glasgow council elections.

Now I'm not involved in the negotiations, but what I would do is to put a demand on the table that Glasgow City Council agrees to negotiate a further settlement of all outstanding claims up to April 2022 - using the previous 2019 settlement. 

And if the SNP politicians refuse to authorise their officials to negotiate on this basis, I would run a high profile public campaign against the council leadership all the way up to the Glasgow council elections in May 2022. 

 

Joint Statement- A4E, GMB, Unison following Equal Pay Settlement Negotiations 18.8.21

This morning the joint claimant group (A4E, GMB, Unison) met with the Council to formally restart negotiations. Our shared priority is to settle outstanding pre-2018 claims up to 2018, to put all claimants into the same position. Our other urgent work is to finally resolve the issues with pensions for all those who have already received a settlement but not had their pension recalculated properly.

The next step will be to secure another interim settlement for all claimants.

Settling everyone up to 2018 will cost the Council in the region of £45m, money we are certain they have access to from previous borrowing exercises. This should be a very straightforward process as we have the settlement blueprint from 2019. However, the Council have informed us that their position is that they will not replicate the previous settlement arrangements. This means that they would be happy to have two colleagues doing exactly the same job, receive different amounts of money purely based on when they lodged their claim.

The joint claimant group will not accept this position. Not only will this delay the process, it is grossly unfair. Parity for all claimants is a core principle for the joint claimant group.

We have also received a very dissatisfactory update on pensions. The progress, which depends on work being done by both GCC and Strathclyde Pension Fund, has been unacceptably slow. Not only that, but GCC have made many, many mistakes in calculations and data. This would have resulted in claimants being shortchanged AGAIN, had it not been caught by Karl Bromley.

To add insult to injury, claimants were subject to a major data breach when GCC sent out claimant data to the wrong claimants.

Members work their entire lives contributing to pensions in the belief that they will have a fair and reasonable sum to live on in their retirement. It is unacceptable how little care and attention has gone into protecting your pensions.

With the slow progress on pensions and the Council’s attempt to throw out the previous settlement, the Joint Claimant Group is now in discussion about next steps. We have no choice but to proceed to tribunal but the questions remains whether work can be progressed outside of the court room.

This has not been a constructive or positive start to the negotiations and it seems clear that Glasgow has not learned its lessons from the first settlement process.

Kind Regards

Sean Baillie 
GMB Scotland Organiser

   

Glasgow's Wrecking Tactics Over Equal Pay 2 (January 21, 2022)

So not only is Glasgow City Council trying to wreck the latest round of equal pay settlement negotiations, GCC's lawyers are apparently preparing new defences which will argue the WPBR pay scheme is not discriminatory - even though it was judged to be 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland highest civil court, in 2017.    

Makes you wonder why the council agreed to a £500 million (partial) settlement of Glasgow's equal pay claims in 2019, if they're now saying that their WPBR scheme is not discriminatory.

Anyway, I think it's high time we heard from the SNP leader of Scotland's largest council, Susan Aitken, to explain what is going on.

  

GCC's Wrecking Tactics Over Equal Pay (August 24, 2021)

 

So the word from Glasgow is that senior council officials seem intent on wrecking the long awaited negotiations needed to secure a final settlement to its 15-year-old equal pay dispute. 

Instead of accepting the obvious and sensible proposal, from the Claimants representatives, to base a further settlement on the agreement reached in 2019 the SNP led council says it wants to 'reinvent the wheel' and start all over again.

Which is as daft as it sounds - a wrecking tactic, if you ask me.

Because the partial settlement of the dispute agreed in 2019 accepted that the council's WPBR pay arrangements (introduced in 2007) are 'unfit for purpose' and must be replaced by a completely new, non-discriminatory job evaluation scheme and pay structure. 

So the council's suggestion sounds like a cynical, time wasting, delaying tactic to kick the issue into the long grass - past next year's Glasgow council elections.

Now I'm not involved in the negotiations, but what I would do is to put a demand on the table that Glasgow City Council agrees to negotiate a further settlement of all  outstanding claims up to April 2022 - using the previous 2019 settlement as a guide. 

And if the SNP politicians refuse to authorise their officials to negotiate on this basis, I would run a high profile public campaign against the council leadership all the way up to the Glasgow council elections in May 2022. 

 

Joint Statement- A4E, GMB, Unison following Equal Pay Settlement Negotiations 18.8.21

This morning the joint claimant group (A4E, GMB, Unison) met with the Council to formally restart negotiations. Our shared priority is to settle outstanding pre-2018 claims up to 2018, to put all claimants into the same position. Our other urgent work is to finally resolve the issues with pensions for all those who have already received a settlement but not had their pension recalculated properly.

The next step will be to secure another interim settlement for all claimants.

Settling everyone up to 2018 will cost the Council in the region of £45m, money we are certain they have access to from previous borrowing exercises. This should be a very straightforward process as we have the settlement blueprint from 2019. However, the Council have informed us that their position is that they will not replicate the previous settlement arrangements. This means that they would be happy to have two colleagues doing exactly the same job, receive different amounts of money purely based on when they lodged their claim.

The joint claimant group will not accept this position. Not only will this delay the process, it is grossly unfair. Parity for all claimants is a core principle for the joint claimant group.

We have also received a very dissatisfactory update on pensions. The progress, which depends on work being done by both GCC and Strathclyde Pension Fund, has been unacceptably slow. Not only that, but GCC have made many, many mistakes in calculations and data. This would have resulted in claimants being shortchanged AGAIN, had it not been caught by Karl Bromley.

To add insult to injury, claimants were subject to a major data breach when GCC sent out claimant data to the wrong claimants.

Members work their entire lives contributing to pensions in the belief that they will have a fair and reasonable sum to live on in their retirement. It is unacceptable how little care and attention has gone into protecting your pensions.

With the slow progress on pensions and the Council’s attempt to throw out the previous settlement, the Joint Claimant Group is now in discussion about next steps. We have no choice but to proceed to tribunal but the questions remains whether work can be progressed outside of the court room.

This has not been a constructive or positive start to the negotiations and it seems clear that Glasgow has not learned its lessons from the first settlement process.

Kind Regards

Sean Baillie 
GMB Scotland Organiser