Glasgow's Women Claimants Deserve Credit - Not Politicians
The final bill for repaying the debt of Glasgow Labour’s equal pay scandal will be well in excess of *£1billion* - the single biggest cut Glasgow faces.
— Glasgow SNP Group (@SNPforGlasgow) April 28, 2022
The SNP’s action to resolve this injustice is the right thing to do - but we are all paying for Labour’s shameful legacy. pic.twitter.com/tYyqRstoIl
The SNP are trying to claim the credit, but the people who really deserve praise are Glasgow's women claimants who fought the City Council under both SNP and Labour administrations for over 10 years.
In fact one of the first things the new SNP council did in 2017 was to try to overturn the decision of the Court of Session that Glasgow's pay arrangements were discriminatory and 'unfit for purpose'.
Thankfully, the SNP's challenge failed in December 2017 which forced the City Council to negotiate a settlement although only after a two-day strike in October 2018 - the first of its kind in Glasgow's history.
Even now there is no 'final agreement' and the Council's discriminatory pay arrangements which were condemned as 'unfit for purpose' in 2017 - are still in place and likely to be so for years.
Glasgow is being left to to clear up its own mess - yet in a major 2017 report Scotland's public spending watchdog (the Accounts Commission) concluded the Scottish Government and Scotland's 32 councils were both responsible for a 'decade long failure of leadership' over equal pay.
So why should Glasgow foot the bill on its own - apart from the fact that the SNP in Glasgow are scared of rocking the boat with the SNP led Scottish Government?
