Performance Pay (01/06/14)
The Sunday Herald shines a timely spotlight on the ongoing fight for equal pay in North Lanarkshire Council with this exclusive article by Judith Duffy.
North Lanarkshire's reluctance to involve ACAS is particularly telling because the prospect of any independent scrutiny into its behaviour must be worrying for the senior officials and political leaders who have got the Council into such a mess.
The remarkable thing is that the people responsible for this pay debacle have been receiving big performance bonuses while making monumental 'mistakes' over the pay and conditions of other much lower paid council employees.
Maybe someone will start a petition calling on these senior council officials to repay their bonuses because I can't see how they can be remotely justified in present circumstances.
Council under fire for 'dragging out' equal pay dispute
NORTH Lanarkshire Council has been criticised for failing to enter talks on settling thousands of equal pay cases for female staff despite admitting mistakes were made over the women's terms and conditions.
Thousands of current and former female staff have been in dispute with North Lanarkshire Council for more than eight years arguing they were earning less than men in comparable but different jobs. Some have died while waiting for the case to be settled.
In March, lawyers and unions hailed a major development when the council conceded at an ongoing employment tribunal that some job gradings — of around 2000 female home-support workers, playground supervisors and school patrol staff — were "unsuitable to be relied on". But the council has since refused to discuss settling these claims, they say.
Now industrial dispute mediator Acas has been asked to step in, while union leaders are planning a publicity campaign calling on the council to take action.
Carol Fox, of Fox and Partners solicitors, who is representing more than 1100 female home support workers, said they had requested the intervention of Acas to bring all parties round the table to "engage in serious discussions". She said: "I am gravely concerned about the position of North Lanarkshire Council and their unwillingness to enter into discussions.
"Delaying it is not going to make the problem go away and it is denying home support workers the money they are due."
Fox said around 22 clients in the equal pay claim against North Lanarkshire had died before their claims had been settled. She added: "We want the council to engage through Acas in constructive discussions before any more of our women die."
John Mooney, branch secretary for Unison North Lanarkshire, said the union would be launching a publicity campaign at the end of June involving advertising trailers, posters and leaflets with the message: "Pay up on equal pay".
He said the union had written to the council to request talks but the response had been "absolutely zero".
"At the least they should be settling on the groups they have made the concession on," he said. "But the longer they keep this running, not only is the amount of compensation getting higher, the amount of taxpayer's money they are wasting on lawyer's fees is getting higher."
A spokeswoman for Acas confirmed a formal offer of conciliation had been made to the parties. But she added: "There are no conciliation meetings planned."
In February, South Lanarkshire Council settled an equal pay dispute involving more than 3000 people, at an estimated cost of £75 million.
North Lanarkshire Council has previously settled a "first wave" of equal pay cases dating up to before January 2007, typically involving carers, cleaners and catering assistants.
A spokesman for North Lanarkshire Council said: "The council continues to defend its position in relation to some groups of equal pay claims.
"To date we have settled or made offers to settle thousands of claims totalling more than £30m and will continue to take a view which balances protecting the council and settling claims where we believe such a course of action is justified."
CASE STUDY
Anne Marie Robertson, from Coatbridge, was a council home support worker for nearly two decades, from 1993 to 2010. The 57-year-old, above, retired from her job on medical grounds suffering from arthritis which she says was triggered by the demands of the role.
"When I started out it was mostly all housework and doing their shopping and getting pensions," she said. "All of a sudden it all changed to home support and it was more of the caring side and that was quite heavy work, such as lifting people.
"I had no idea I wasn't getting paid properly — but thinking about the things we had to do, we were very underpaid.
"It is frustrating that is has been dragging on for so many years — quite a lot of the ladies have actually died and missed out.
"It makes me feel quite angry — I think at the end of the day they will need to pay out."
Another equal pay claimant is Margaret Fisher, 64, from Wishaw, who was a home support worker with the council from 2000-2011.
She said: "I am getting frustrated. You get to the point where you think we are never going to get this money.
"Everyone I worked with, we all thought we should have been getting a better rate for the job we were doing.
"When I started the job I thought it was okay, but once you get into it and are doing the harder part of it, you felt as if you should have been getting a better rate.
"Sometimes it was going in and doing a bit of housework and cooking, but mostly at the end it was personal care I was doing — such as assisting with washing and showering."
She added: "The council's attitude makes me quite angry — especially when you are hearing now that other councils have had a settlement and paid out."
Pay Freeze Hypocrites (26 March 2012)
North Lanarkshire Council should hang its head in shame.
The Sunday Herald has exposed a secret pay deal involving big bonus payments to some of the council's most senior officials - which must have been approved by the Labour Group that runs North Lanarkshire Council (NLC).
The truth has been dragged out of North Lanarkshire Council - and shows that 29 senior staff scooped approximately £184,000 in extra payments - chief executive Gavin Whitefield being the biggest winner with an extra £12,050 on top of his £136,848 salary.
Which must make other council workers hopping mad - because at a time when their pay is being frozen - the chief executive is awarded an 9% pay increase.
How's that for hypocrisy and double standards?
The Sunday Herald goes on to point out that five executive directors - who earn salaries of £113,250 a year - all received more than £9000 - as did the assistant chief executive John Ellerby.
And more than 20 heads of service - on salaries between £77,166 and £85,761 - each took home bonus payments of approximately £4000 to £6000.
Now the council calls these extra payments performance related pay - but they are really just bonuses by another name.
Apparently only a select group of people can access such payments - and I imagine the scheme works in only one direction in the sense that a senior official's core salary is guaranteed - so the chief executive can never earn less than £136,848 a year.
In which case how can it be a genuine performance based scheme - if people's pay can only go up but never down?
The salaries of all council chief executives is determined by collective bargaining - in a similar way to other groups of council employees - via a Scottish Joint Negotiating Committee (SJNC).
On the SJNC for chief executives and chief officials - where COSLA represents the employers' interests and Unison is the main trade union - salaries for chief executives are set as part of a Scotland-wide agreement - and the pay of Glasgow's chief executive always comes out on top.
Because Glasgow is by far the largest council - and by and large that is what any sensible person would expect.
But there is no provision in the Scotland-wide salary agreement - for locally determined performance pay - since that would be against the spirit of national bargaining and would be potentially discriminatory as well - especially if such payments are only available to elite groups of senior staff.
So the whole thing's a disgrace if you ask me.
In many ways it reminds me of the secret 'top-up' payments made by Glasgow City Council - to councillors who acted as Chairs of its arm's length external organisations (such as Cordia) - or ALEOs as they became known.
Regular readers will remember that these payments were stopped by the Scottish Government - but only after an independent enquiry criticised Glasgow's top-up payments - as unjustified, unnecessary and a complete waste of taxpayers' money.
So I would be interested to hear how a Labour-run council can justify this kind of behaviour.
Especially at a time when thousands of people in North Lanarkshire Council are still fighting for equal pay.
How can the senior Labour councillors who signed off on this deal - look a low paid worker in the eye without feeling a huge sense of embarrassment and shame?
And have you noticed how the tame Labour unions have nothing to say - just as they did over equal pay the unions seem to have lost their voices.
Roll on the local council elections on 3rd May, I say - there is a day of reckoning coming and the sooner it comes the better.
If I had a vote in North Lanarkshire in May - I'd vote for a party which promised to end the scandal of Labour's secret bonus payments - to the council's most senior and well paid staff.
The Sunday Herald has exposed a secret pay deal involving big bonus payments to some of the council's most senior officials - which must have been approved by the Labour Group that runs North Lanarkshire Council (NLC).
The truth has been dragged out of North Lanarkshire Council - and shows that 29 senior staff scooped approximately £184,000 in extra payments - chief executive Gavin Whitefield being the biggest winner with an extra £12,050 on top of his £136,848 salary.
Which must make other council workers hopping mad - because at a time when their pay is being frozen - the chief executive is awarded an 9% pay increase.
How's that for hypocrisy and double standards?
The Sunday Herald goes on to point out that five executive directors - who earn salaries of £113,250 a year - all received more than £9000 - as did the assistant chief executive John Ellerby.
And more than 20 heads of service - on salaries between £77,166 and £85,761 - each took home bonus payments of approximately £4000 to £6000.
Now the council calls these extra payments performance related pay - but they are really just bonuses by another name.
Apparently only a select group of people can access such payments - and I imagine the scheme works in only one direction in the sense that a senior official's core salary is guaranteed - so the chief executive can never earn less than £136,848 a year.
In which case how can it be a genuine performance based scheme - if people's pay can only go up but never down?
The salaries of all council chief executives is determined by collective bargaining - in a similar way to other groups of council employees - via a Scottish Joint Negotiating Committee (SJNC).
On the SJNC for chief executives and chief officials - where COSLA represents the employers' interests and Unison is the main trade union - salaries for chief executives are set as part of a Scotland-wide agreement - and the pay of Glasgow's chief executive always comes out on top.
Because Glasgow is by far the largest council - and by and large that is what any sensible person would expect.
But there is no provision in the Scotland-wide salary agreement - for locally determined performance pay - since that would be against the spirit of national bargaining and would be potentially discriminatory as well - especially if such payments are only available to elite groups of senior staff.
So the whole thing's a disgrace if you ask me.
In many ways it reminds me of the secret 'top-up' payments made by Glasgow City Council - to councillors who acted as Chairs of its arm's length external organisations (such as Cordia) - or ALEOs as they became known.
Regular readers will remember that these payments were stopped by the Scottish Government - but only after an independent enquiry criticised Glasgow's top-up payments - as unjustified, unnecessary and a complete waste of taxpayers' money.
So I would be interested to hear how a Labour-run council can justify this kind of behaviour.
Especially at a time when thousands of people in North Lanarkshire Council are still fighting for equal pay.
How can the senior Labour councillors who signed off on this deal - look a low paid worker in the eye without feeling a huge sense of embarrassment and shame?
And have you noticed how the tame Labour unions have nothing to say - just as they did over equal pay the unions seem to have lost their voices.
Roll on the local council elections on 3rd May, I say - there is a day of reckoning coming and the sooner it comes the better.
If I had a vote in North Lanarkshire in May - I'd vote for a party which promised to end the scandal of Labour's secret bonus payments - to the council's most senior and well paid staff.
