Daylight Is The Best Disinfectant
I agreed with this comment from a regular reader who asked what Nicola Sturgeon is doing to help shine a light on Glasgow City Council where senior officials have still to come clean over the way in which traditional male council jobs were 'looked after' under Glasgow's controversial WPBR pay scheme.
Nicola Sturgeon said a while back she was going to shine a light in the murky corridors of city chambers. Well where's your torch then Nicola?
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Now I've heard very little from Glasgow's MSPs and MPs during the fight for equal pay in Glasgow which I have to say I find very surprising given their willingness to comment on other issues that are outside of the formal remits of the Scottish and Westminster Parliaments.
Many have commented on the unacceptable use force from Spain's 'Guardia Civil' which accompanied yesterday's referendum on Catalan independence - which I agree with wholeheartedly.
But that doesn't stop MSPs and MPs from speaking their mind about secretive pay arrangements which have denied low paid workers in Glasgow City Council their right to 'equal pay for work of equal value' for the past 10 years.
First Minister and Equal Pay (30/09/17)
Glasgow City Council keeps claiming to have little or no working knowledge about its controversial Employee Development Commitment (EDC) scheme which gave former bonus earning jobs a guarantee about their future earnings.
But just look at the document below which is a Glasgow City Council Progress Report on the EDC dated 13 February 2017.
Not only does this GCC official document identity EDC beneficiaries by their different council departments, the table also explains the way in which former bonus earnings will be maintained.
The point being that if such a document exists to explain the Council's EDC position as at February 2007 there must be a letter version and other documents which explain how the men's pay was affected.
Now council officials claim that finding this information is a Herculean and highly expensive task exercise which is a whole load of bollix if you ask me.
Which is why the Council leadership and the First Minister should send in people who know what they're doing and are who determined to get to the bottom of things.
Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission, for example.
EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT COMMITMENT SUMMARY
Progress as at 13 February 2007
Sign Ups as at 1 February 2007
Service
|
Total Number of Staff
|
Service Reform Proposals
|
Staff Development Proposals
|
Job Redesign
|
Other
|
Detriment Staff Signed Up 01/02/07
|
Detriment Staff over 2.5 % Signed Up
|
Detriment Staff over 2.5 % Signed Up Receiving Development
|
BS RSBi
|
139
|
60
|
79
|
15
|
6
|
6
| ||
Chief Executive
|
24
|
1
|
20
|
3
|
97
|
29
|
26
| |
CLS
|
630
|
549
|
73
|
8
|
321
|
141
|
26
| |
DACS
|
171
|
4
|
155
|
12
|
238
|
177
|
30
| |
DRS
|
314
|
97
|
101
|
116*
|
115
|
26
|
11
| |
Education
|
326
|
190
|
124
|
12
|
268
|
169
|
134
| |
EPS
|
244
|
43
|
201
|
206
|
137
|
97
| ||
Financial
|
72
|
28
|
44
|
58
|
13
|
12
| ||
Land Services
|
675
|
435
|
166
|
74
|
508
|
358
|
337(1)
| |
Social Work
|
1,083
|
934
|
101
|
48
|
865
|
785
|
(2)
| |
TOTAL
|
3,678
|
2,341
|
1,064
|
131
|
142
|
2,691
|
1,841
|
679
|
*The proposal is to alter working hours.
Note: Many staff that will be part of Service Reform or Job Redesign will also require development.
(1) Development number actually reflects Development/Service Review.
(2) Awaiting Feb progress report to identify those for Development.
First Minister and Equal Pay (20/09/17)
If you ask me, the current crop of senior officials are in this up to their necks and they have an obvious vested interest in dragging things out for years on end - by which time they will have all left the Council and/or retired on their final salary pensions.
So I've drafted some words below which people can use to build support amongst the City Council workforce and wider public.
In my view, the behaviour of Glasgow City Council is a national disgrace and it's high time that the Council's pay arrangements were brought out into the open
Nicola Sturgeon rightly condemned this 'foot-dragging' behaviour by Scottish councils back in 2016 and now she has the opportunity to do something about it in her own back yard.
The key point of the petition is that if Glasgow's officials are being deliberately awkward or if they are claiming not to have sufficient resources to 'come clean' over the City Council's pay arrangements, then the Scottish Government can send in some outside help.
No doubt this would help to concentrate minds and get to the bottom of things and explain just how the male jobs were 'looked after' by council managers and the trade unions once the WPBR/EDC pay scheme was introduced in 2007.
Nicola Sturgeon's contact details are:
FirstMinister@gov.scot
Nicola.Sturgeon.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
@NicolaSturgeon
Readers of the blog site can also help by spreading the word by 'Sharing', 'Liking' and 'Retweeting' this post on Facebook and Twitter - and by raising these issues directly with local councillors, MSPs and MPs.
Remember - many hands make light work and so the more people who get involved the sooner this business will al be over.
Glasgow and Equal Pay
"We, the undersigned, call upon Nicola Sturgeon to use her authority and influence as a Glasgow MSP and First Minister to bring about a speedy resolution to Glasgow City Council's outstanding equal pay cases.
"We note that the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, recently judged Glasgow's WPBR pay arrangements introduced in 2007 to be unfit for purpose with Lady Norris (one of the judges) commenting that the City Council 'looked after' the interests of the men.
"We also note that while there is clear evidence of preferential treatment being given to male dominated jobs, council officials seem unwilling or unable to 'come clean' and explain the details of these secret pay deals and what effect they had on the pay of Gardeners, Gravediggers, Refuse Workers and so on.
"We call upon the First Minister to help ensure that Glasgow City Council's pay arrangements are fair, open, honest and transparent going forward - based on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.
"To that end we also call upon the First Minister to send in Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission (Scotland's public spending watchdog) to work with the City Council leadership to uncover, as a matter of the highest priority,how the higher paid groups of male workers were 'looked after' when the WPBR/EDC pay scheme was introduced in 2007."
The Fight for Equal Pay in Glasgow (01/10/17)
The Sunday Herald has a must read article by Peter Swindon on the costs racked up by Glasgow City Council in the long fight for equal pay.
The SNP have repeatedly said that they are committed to a comprehensive settlement of the outstanding claims and that people will receive the compensation they are so obviously entitled to given the damning judgment from the Court of Session.
But the City Council has still to come clean and explain the details of exactly how the men's interests were looked after under the WPBR pay scheme which is fundamental to any settlement, since the pay gap between traditional male and female jobs still exists in 2017 and is just as wide as it was ten years ago in 2007.
I had to laugh though at the 'no comment' comment from Richard Leonard who worked for the GMB union for many years before becoming an MSP: one minute he he's a champion of equal pay, yet the next he can't find anything to say about the appalling track record of Labour and the unions in Glasgow.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15568711.Revealed__Labour_led_Glasgow_council_spent_millions_fighting_women_workers__39__equal_pay_claims/
Revealed: Labour-led Glasgow council spent millions fighting women workers' equal pay claims
By Peter Swindon - The Sunday Herald
Susan Aitken
SCOTLAND’S largest local authority spent more than £2.5 million fighting equal pay claims by female council workers over the last 10 years.
Figures released following a Freedom of Information request show that between 2007 and 2017 – when the Labour Party controlled Glasgow City Council – £1.8m was spent on legal fees and a further £700,000 on “internal staff costs” to contest claims by women who were victims of wage discrimination.
The SNP claimed the figures “demonstrate just how far Labour was prepared to go to fight equal pay” and a campaign group which represents the majority of claimants said the outlay was an “incredible waste of public money”.
The Court of Session decided in August that a re-grading scheme introduced by Glasgow City Council in 2007 may have provided less favourable treatment for women workers. In September the SNP leader of the local authority Susan Aitken pledged to “end Glasgow’s years of pay injustice”.
She has held meetings with Scottish Government Finance Secretary Derek Mackay to discuss “financial assistance” which could help pay the anticipated £500m compensation bill to at least 6,000 women.
However, the SNP has criticised Labour for dragging its heels on equal pay when it led the council, potentially increasing the cost to the public purse.
The Freedom of Information request asked Glasgow City Council to set out internal and external costs for equal pay litigation and administration and the local authority provided figures from 2007 until 2017, a period covered by the re-grading scheme which was at the centre of the Court of Session ruling.
The council spent a total of £2,551,256 fighting the claims, including £712,832 on internal staff costs. The fees for “counsels, solicitors, opposition legal expenses, shorthand writers, postage” and “other professional fees and expenses” totalled £1,838,425.
A council source said one long-serving senior director “went white” when they realised how much had been paid out.
Last month Aitken, who became council leader after the May local authority election, accused Labour politicians of “sticking their heads in the sand” over equal pay, “denying justice” to women workers.
She said years of inaction “inflated the potential cost with each passing year – not to mention the cost of legal fees”.
An SNP source said: “These figures are horrendous and show just how far Labour was prepared to go in Glasgow to fight equal pay. If they had just sorted this out when it first became an issue 10 years ago it would have cost a fraction of what it will cost now.
“Labour's leadership candidates need to justify why they stayed silent on this issue for all those years and didn't raise it with Labour whilst they ran the council. Why didn't they ask them to direct officers to resolve this issue years ago?”
Former Head of Local Government for Unison Scotland, Mark Irvine, who is now an equalities campaigner and the spokesman for Action 4 Equality Scotland (A4ES), which represents more than 80 per cent of claimants, said: “£2.5 m is an incredible waste of public money, especially after three senior judges in Scotland's highest civil court, the Court of Session, unanimously concluded that Glasgow City Council's pay arrangements are unfit for purpose.
“I suspect the figure is likely to be a huge underestimate of the true cost to the council and local council taxpayers…Glasgow's figures underestimate the real costs involved because they don't reflect the cost of large numbers of highly paid senior officials spending much time of their time pulling the wool over the eyes of a largely female workforce, instead of looking after their interests by upholding the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.”
Susan Aitken
SCOTLAND’S largest local authority spent more than £2.5 million fighting equal pay claims by female council workers over the last 10 years.
Figures released following a Freedom of Information request show that between 2007 and 2017 – when the Labour Party controlled Glasgow City Council – £1.8m was spent on legal fees and a further £700,000 on “internal staff costs” to contest claims by women who were victims of wage discrimination.
The SNP claimed the figures “demonstrate just how far Labour was prepared to go to fight equal pay” and a campaign group which represents the majority of claimants said the outlay was an “incredible waste of public money”.
The Court of Session decided in August that a re-grading scheme introduced by Glasgow City Council in 2007 may have provided less favourable treatment for women workers. In September the SNP leader of the local authority Susan Aitken pledged to “end Glasgow’s years of pay injustice”.
She has held meetings with Scottish Government Finance Secretary Derek Mackay to discuss “financial assistance” which could help pay the anticipated £500m compensation bill to at least 6,000 women.
However, the SNP has criticised Labour for dragging its heels on equal pay when it led the council, potentially increasing the cost to the public purse.
The Freedom of Information request asked Glasgow City Council to set out internal and external costs for equal pay litigation and administration and the local authority provided figures from 2007 until 2017, a period covered by the re-grading scheme which was at the centre of the Court of Session ruling.
The council spent a total of £2,551,256 fighting the claims, including £712,832 on internal staff costs. The fees for “counsels, solicitors, opposition legal expenses, shorthand writers, postage” and “other professional fees and expenses” totalled £1,838,425.
A council source said one long-serving senior director “went white” when they realised how much had been paid out.
Last month Aitken, who became council leader after the May local authority election, accused Labour politicians of “sticking their heads in the sand” over equal pay, “denying justice” to women workers.
She said years of inaction “inflated the potential cost with each passing year – not to mention the cost of legal fees”.
An SNP source said: “These figures are horrendous and show just how far Labour was prepared to go in Glasgow to fight equal pay. If they had just sorted this out when it first became an issue 10 years ago it would have cost a fraction of what it will cost now.
“Labour's leadership candidates need to justify why they stayed silent on this issue for all those years and didn't raise it with Labour whilst they ran the council. Why didn't they ask them to direct officers to resolve this issue years ago?”
Former Head of Local Government for Unison Scotland, Mark Irvine, who is now an equalities campaigner and the spokesman for Action 4 Equality Scotland (A4ES), which represents more than 80 per cent of claimants, said: “£2.5 m is an incredible waste of public money, especially after three senior judges in Scotland's highest civil court, the Court of Session, unanimously concluded that Glasgow City Council's pay arrangements are unfit for purpose.
“I suspect the figure is likely to be a huge underestimate of the true cost to the council and local council taxpayers…Glasgow's figures underestimate the real costs involved because they don't reflect the cost of large numbers of highly paid senior officials spending much time of their time pulling the wool over the eyes of a largely female workforce, instead of looking after their interests by upholding the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.”
A council spokeswoman said: “These are costs incurred by previous administrations that chose to challenge pay claims through the courts.”
A Labour source accused SNP critics of “staggering hypocrisy” adding “It is currently an SNP-run council which is appealing a Court of Session decision on equal pay.”
Aitken responded: “Any remaining legal proceedings will only be for the purposes of providing clarity, they will not be used to delay or put barriers in the way of reaching a settlement. I have instructed council officers to begin talks to agree terms of reference for negotiations with all parties.”
A spokesman for Anas Sarwar’s leadership campaign said: “Anas has put tackling gender inequality at the heart of his campaign, and has already unveiled plans to create a Labour commission to finally end the gender pay gap once and for all.”
Richard Leonard’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
