Fine Kettle of Fish


Labour's UK deputy leader - Harriet Harman is in Scotland today for a high-level summit on women's employment with the new Scottish Labour leader - Johann Lamont.

Both women style themselves as committed feminists - strong supporters of equality issues and so by logical extension they must be firm believers in equal pay.

Both women also have access to good quality information about the extent of the scandal over equal pay - both in Scotland and across the rest of the UK.

Because Harriet is married to Jack Dromey, the former deputy general secretary of Unite - while Johann is married to Archie Graham, a senior Labour councillor in Glasgow City Council for years.

Yet as far as I know neither Harriet or Johann have spoken out publicly - to condemn the widespread pay discrimination in local councils - and the bonuses paid only to traditional male jobs.

Which the employers and the trade unions - of course - turned a blind eye to for so many years.

Now I I find this utterly fascinating - probably because it's the most obvious and glaring example of widespread pay discrimination there has been in the UK for the past 20 years - one that's been going on right under the noses of many Labour councils and the Labour supporting trade unions.

Who wouldn't be fascinated - by such a strange and peculiar phenomenon.

So why - I ask myself - should Harriet and Johann get themselves so so worked up about  women's employment and unemployment at this stage?

When they have effectively ignored - for years - the hugely important issue of equal pay and low pay - for many thousands of women employed by local councils in Scotland.

Johann has been an MSP in the Scottish Parliament since 1999 - and I believe Harriet has even longer service as an MP at Westminster.

I'm pretty sure Archie Graham has been a Glasgow City councillor all that time.

But I know for a fact that Jack Dromey was a key player in the trade unions - because he was one of the signatories to the 1997 UK Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.

Jack was the lead UK negotiator for the TGWU at that time - which has merged since to become Unite, the union.

So there we have it - a fine kettle of fish - from a Labour party point of view anyway.

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