North Lanarkshire Update

I wrote the other day about the process for re-evaluating various council jobs that now appears to be underway in North Lanarkshire.

Now I don't know this chap Ian Brewster who has apparently been appointed as an independent person who will oversee the process, but there was someone with the same  name who acted a member of the Job Analyst Team back in 1999 which helped to adapt the UK 'Gauge' Job Evaluation Scheme (JES) for use in Scotland.  

At that time Ian Brewster worked in the Personnel Department of South Ayrshire Council and the Job Analyst Team reported to the Technical Adviser and Project Manager, a woman named Rosie Docherty.

Regular readers will remember that Rosie Docherty was invited by North Lanarkshire's head of personnel, Iris Wylie, to carry out the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) demanded by the trade unions back in 2006.

And the EIA proved to be pretty useless if you ask me, because it failed to look at the huge differences in pay between male and female jobs after new pay arrangements were introduced in 2007.

So what was the point of the Equality Impact Assessment? 

Not a lot, as far as I can see, but I wonder if the Ian Brewster who was involved in the COSLA JES exercise back in 1999 is the same Ian Brewster whom North Lanarkshire have appointed to oversee this further re-evaluation in 2015.

Now you would think that this information would be on the Council's web site for all to see, along with details of how the appointment was made, what terms of reference have been agreed and by whom. 

Yet no one seems to know, or if they do know they're not sharing the information with the Council workforce which doesn't bode too well for the future.