Glasgow's Fight For Equal Pay

They’re spending £470 million on bike lanes.
But sure. https://t.co/XWDagMrFpB

— Brian Spella (@BrianSpanner1) September 29, 2022

So the latest news from Glasgow is that the City Council is effectively raising a mortgage on some of our best known buildings to pay for its ongoing obligations on equal pay.

Yet the Council is doing so without any help from Scottish Ministers whose public spending watchdog (Accounts Commission) concluded that SNP Ministers and local government both shared responsibility for the 'decade long failure of leadership over equal pay' between 2007-2017.

And SNP ministers, as everyone knows, have been cutting the budgets of Scotland's local councils for years!  

Glasgow's Fight For Equal Pay (August 12, 2022)

My contacts in Glasgow City Council (GCC) tell me that furious activity is taking place behind the scenes to identify more council owned property to use as collateral against another big loan - so the council can meet its obligations on equal pay.

Now I'm all in favour of GCC paying the workers what they're due - not least because the council's discriminatory pay arrangements which were condemned as 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session in 2017 are still in place in 2022.

And until the council brings in a new, fit for purpose pay scheme thousands of workers continue to have equal pay claims - going forward to 2023, 2024 and beyond.

Meanwhile the Glasgow council tax payer is footing the bill - even though Scotland's public spending watchdog (the Accounts Commission) judged Scottish Ministers shared responsibility for 'a decade long failure of leadership' over equal pay back in 2017.

So it seems monstrously unfair to me that the people of Glasgow are doing all the heavy lifting and that SNP Ministers who have been in power since 2007 are not being asked to help out.

SNP, Glasgow and 'Rocking the Boat' (April 03, 2022)

 

Glasgow City Council faces another huge £250 million bill to finance yet another 'interim payment' in its long-running equal pay dispute - which is on top of the £500 million paid out in 2019.

The final bill is likely to top £1 billion before the City Council finally replaces its discriminatory WPBR pay arrangements which were condemned as 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court as far back as 2017.

Now in 2017 Scotland's public spending watchdog, the Accounts Commission, concluded that Scottish Ministers were responsible for this 'decade long failure of leadership' over equal pay along with local councils like Glasgow.

So why is the SNP leader of Scotland's largest council so reluctant to bang on the door of the Scottish Government to ask for help in finding a way out of this awful mess - is there a reason local politicians are afraid to rock the boat?

Because it's unfair for the burden to be falling entirely on council tax payers in Glasgow.