Cynical Sell-Out
Cynical Sell-Out (November 2013)
Here's a blast form the past - an article written by me which appeared in The Herald newspaper back in November 2005 just as Glasgow City Council was in the process of trying to stampede thousands of low paid workers into accepting poor offers of settlement - in respect of their equal pay claims.
Only weeks earlier Glasgow City Council had been dying vehemently that it had any problem with equal pay which was true up to a point - because the trade unions had certainly not been demanding action from the Council - that only happened when Action 4 Equality Scotland arrived on the scene in August 2005 at which point Glasgow finally began to take the issue seriously.
In fact the trade unions helped do the Council's dirty work and stood in the sidelines while their members - and non-union members - were pressurised into accepting very low offers of settlement which is why to this day the unions have no credibility with the workforce when it comes to equal pay.
Because when the chips were down the trade unions took the side of the Council instead of standing up for their lowest paid members - in my view largely as the result of the close political links between Labour politicians and the Labour supporting trade unions.
An interesting aside is that none of Glasgow's MSPs spoke out at the time about what was happening - they all kept their heads down to a man and a woman including one Johann Lamont MSP, a self-proclamined feminist and now the Scottish Labour leader.
A cynical sell-out of the low paid
After 30 years of equal-pay legislation, why are so many women workers in Scotland paid so much less than their male colleagues? In this 21st-century world, how can employers and unions justify the fact that skilled home-carers earn thousands of pounds less than council road sweepers or refuse collectors, or that trained nurses come out second best in the pay stakes to hospital painters?
A full-time home-carer earns around £12,500 per year, while a refuse collector or road sweeper makes £14,500 – the refuse driver earns £18,500. The same is true in Scotland's NHS where (male) maintenance workers, with no patient contact or responsibilities, are paid much more than many nurses and skilled support staff.
Nowadays, employers must justify paying groups of male workers more than groups of women workers – even where they do very different jobs. The onus is on employers to prove that higher-earning male groups do more skilled and responsible jobs, or jobs that require more training and/or qualifications – this is the only justification for paying women less than men.
This is an absurd proposition for the thousands of skilled jobs, predominantly women's jobs, that deliver vital services in Scotland's care, education and health sectors. Care-workers, cooks, cleaners, classroom assistants, nurses, nursery nurses and clerical workers – are undervalued and underpaid compared to male groups on big bonuses, traditionally denied to women.
In effect, the employers and unions have been defending the indefensible for years – talking tough periodically, but doing little to tackle pay discrimination.
In 1999, for example, local councils and trade unions in Scotland signed a landmark "single status" agreement that guaranteed equal pay for work of equal value. In future, a new system would pay all workers fairly on the basis of their skills and responsibilities, regardless of gender.
This required employers to introduce a non-discriminatory job evaluation scheme: one that assesses and scores jobs properly to produce a fair ranking of jobs, grades and rates of pay across the entire workforce.
Yet having, in 1999, paid £250,000 (from public funds) for a tailor-made job evaluation scheme to do exactly that, the employers and unions simply sat on their hands for the next six years, blaming each other for the lack of progress. The result is that thousands of workers in Scotland have built up substantial equal-pay claims.
In August 2005, Action 4 Equality began drawing this debacle to the attention of Scotland's public-sector workers. Up until then, union members and non-members had been kept in the dark about their employment rights, and their ability to pursue equal pay claims – with up to five years' back pay.
The employers have responded by trying to buy out peoples' claims on the cheap, aided and abetted by the unions. In Glasgow, the council has offered a one-off payment to thousands of workers in the run-up to Christmas which many have accepted because they are poor, in debt or simply in need of the extra cash at this time of year. Sadly, the irony of a Labour council behaving this way is lost on the council's equalities spokesperson.
The council's cynical ploy has been rejected by many of its workers, who are now pursuing claims to the employment tribunals because the Glasgow deal and trade unions in Scotland signed a landmark "Single Status" agreement that guaranteed equal pay for work of equal value. In future, a new system would pay all workers fairly on the basis of their skills and responsibilities, regardless of gender.
This required employers to introduce a non-discriminatory job evaluation scheme: one that assesses and scores jobs properly to produce a fair ranking of jobs, grades and rates of pay across the entire workforce.
Yet having, in 1999, paid £250,000 (from public funds) for a tailor-made job evaluation scheme to do exactly that, the employers and unions simply sat on their hands for the next six years, blaming each other for the lack of progress. The result is that thousands of workers in Scotland have built up substantial equal-pay claims.
Glasgow council claims that implementing equal pay will affect jobs and services, but they've had years to devise a proper strategy that does not rely on blackmailing low-paid workers into remaining low-paid and undervalued.
So, we now have the sordid spectacle of employers and unions working hand-in-glove to deny low-paid workers what they were promised. In recent weeks, Glasgow workers were instructed to attend a series of road shows where senior (but not low-paid) council officials tried to sell their buy-out deal – with not a single union official or union lawyer in sight.
Some criticise Action 4 Equality because clients are charged a fee (10% + VAT) in return for a No Win No Fee professional. Yet the unions have taken millions in union contributions from their low-paid members over the years – only to sell them short when the chips are down. The truth is that without our intervention equal pay would still be going nowhere fast.
As the New Year approaches, the equal-pay campaign will enter a new phase. Union members will start to sue their own unions and the employers for failing to protect their rights.
The unions (GMB, TGWU, and Unison), in Glasgow and elsewhere, are busy doing secret deals, behind closed doors, without consulting or advising their members properly. But, as these deals discriminate against the low-paid, who will lose thousands over the next five years, they can and will be challenged. The employers and unions will be held to account for the shameful way they have behaved.
Mark Irvine is spokesperson for Action 4 Equality Scotland and a former chief negotiator with the public services union, Unison.
