What's the Big Secret? (05/06/14)

I've just learned that North Lanarkshire Council is have an extra special meeting on equal pay tomorrow (Thursday 5 June) at 2pm in Motherwell Civic Centre.

Now this is a meeting with a difference because apparently:

• the public and press are being excluded 
• the papers are not being circulated in advance
• instead the papers are being tabled on the day 
• the papers are being collected back in and can't be taken away  

If you ask me, this sounds more like North Korea than North Lanarkshire.

So what's all the secrecy and furtiveness about because job evaluation and its underlying pay arrangements is supposed to be an open and transparent business - one which the Council workforce and taxpayers can have confidence in are far, as the use of public money is concerned.

In other words this is the opposite of local democracy with elected councillors being 'gagged'  and the wider public prevented from knowing what's really going on as far as equal pay is concerned.

And the fact that an Employment Tribunal is still underway is neither here nor there because the Council has already admitted making a complete hash of job evaluation and the pay arrangements that flow from the application of its job evaluation scheme (JES).

Yet, so far at least, no one has been held accountable for this debacle and no one will if meetings keep being held in secret where senior officials and politicians are being protected from effective scrutiny of their actions.

'What can people in do about this scandalous carry on?', I hear readers ask.

Well local councillors can spill the beans obviously and even if papers are being gathered back in there's nothing to stop elected politicians from taking notes and 'whistleblowing' the contents of the papers - unless North Lanarkshire has turned into some kind of police state, so word is bound to get out.

If I were a senior member of staff within the Council, I would definitely consider making a formal whistleblowing complaint because this provides people with legal protection if they are exposing wrongdoing.

Council workers and equal pay claimants can lobby the Council meeting although at 2pm in the afternoon, of course, most people will be at their work.

The only good news is that this kind of bizarre behaviour simply confirms that North Lanarkshire is digging an ever deeper hole for itself over equal pay, but keep up the pressure because that's the best way to make the Council come to its senses.