Calling Glasgow's MSPs and MPs
Here's a great story from the Evening Times which reports that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has joined forces with Glasgow's seven MPs to call for FirstBus to 'think again' over planned fare increases.
Now if it's possible for cross-party working over a private bus company, why don't Glasgow's MSPs and MPs come together to call upon Glasgow City Council to accept the decision of the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, over equal pay?
As everyone knows, the Court of Session judged Glasgow's cockamamy WPBR pay scheme to be 'unfit for purpose' and also threw out the City Council's request to be allowed to appeal this unanimous decision to the UK Supreme Court in London.
The Council Leader Susan Aitken has repeatedly made clear that she wishes to abandon any further legal appeals, so you would think that Glasgow's MSPs and MPs would row in behind that position and give Susan Aitken their full support.
The deadline is new Wednesday 18 January 2018 which means there is plenty of time for Glasgow's politicians to make their views clear.
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/15822832.Pressure_mounts_on_FirstBus_over_fares_rise_as_First_Minister_and_city_MPs_join_the_row/
Pressure mounts on FirstBus over fares rise in Glasgow as First Minister and city MPs join the row
By STEWART PATERSON - Evening Times
PRESSURE is mounting on First Bus to reverse inflation busting price hikes on Glasgow buses after the First Minister and all seven city MPs joined the row over the rises.
Nicola Sturgeon said she “shared the concerns” of passengers after some fares increased by as much as 40% in some cases.
The Evening Times reported this week that fares would rise for under 16s by 40% and unaccompanied child fares would be scrapped.
Single adult fares increase by 15% although prices bought with a smartphone app have been frozen.
Ms Sturgeon was asked by Glasgow Labour MSP Johann Lamont if she was concerned by the increase.
Ms Sturgeon said: “I am an MSP for part of the city of Glasgow and I share the concerns that have been expressed by my constituents and by many people across Scotland about bus fare increases, including the FirstBus increase that was announced this week.”
She said she would be making representations to FirstBus in her role as Glasgow Southside MSP.
She added: “Of course, individual bus operators must reach their own decisions.”
The city’s seven MPs at Westminster have also condemned the fare rise which they have branded “inflation busting” and “shocking”
In a joint letter to Andrew Jarvis First Glasgow Managing Director, the six SNP MPs and one LabourMP urged the firm to abandon the rise and focus on delivering a better service.
The letters states:” It is disgraceful that fares for under 16s will rise by more than 40 per cent while unaccompanied child concession tickets have been axed altogether.
Even more shocking is that unemployed passengers will be hit with a 10 per cent hike in fares, which will also have an impact on their ability to get to interviews or sign on for benefits – which is hugely damaging to their livelihoods.”
First Bus were told that people do not believe they are receiving a fair deal for what they pay.
The MPs continued “Passengers rightly expect a reliable and regular service for the money they pay but there is widespread feeling amongst our constituents that this is not what they get in return for fares.”
Stewart McDonald, Glasgow South SNP MP co-ordinated the letter and laid a motion in Westminster condemning the decision.
Mr McDonald said: “Buses are vital in accessing employment, education and reducing our carbon footprint.
“The price rises reduce access to vital public services and makes the daily commute increasingly unaffordable.”
Graeme Macfarlan, Commercial Director for First Glasgow, said they were reviewing the 10p and 20p increases for the unemployed "in light of Job Centre closures."
He added: "The change to a number of fares incorporated a range of price freezes, price reductions and some price increases. As part of a number of initiatives to speed up journeys we have heavily incentivised the purchase of tickets on our mTicket app.
"Like many organisations, we recognise the importance of being mobile as part of everyday modern life. We are therefore urging our customers to switch to mobile ticketing, which will provide easier access to our services.
“I acknowledge that some single tickets for children have increased from 70p to a £1, however, these have previously been held for a number of years. On reflection, given the recent closures of a number of Job Centres, it is our intention to review the proposed 10p and 20p increase in the tickets for the unemployed."
Glasgow MSPs and MPs (12/01/18)
Here's a joint letter from Glasgow MPs to the Managing Director of First Glasgow calling on the company to scrap fare increases.
The letter has been posted on Twitter by Stewart McDonald MP and fair play to them, I say, because it's a matter of real interest and importance to their local constituents.
Wouldn't it be great to see a similar initiative from Glasgow's MPs on the long fight for equal pay in Glasgow - calling on the City Council to accept the judgment of the Court of Session, for example?
- Chris Stephens MP and Paul Sweeney MP likedAs the UK Government's dreadful Jobcentre closure plan begins roll out, this week of all weeks is the wrong time for @FirstinGlasgow to be hiking fares for people across the city. Glasgow MPs have written a joint letter urging them to scrap fare increases.
Glasgow - Equal Pay Update (10/01/18)
I think it's safe to say there was no big breakthrough at the first equal pay meeting of 2018 with Glasgow City Council, otherwise everyone would have been shouting from the rooftops of the City Chambers.
So the settlement process continues and further meetings are in the diary, but the elephant in the room is the issue of whether Scotland's largest council now accepts the judgement of Scotland's highest civil court, the Court of Session, that Glasgow's discredited WPBR pay scheme really is 'unfit for purpose'.
If so, the City Council needs to take 'off the table' the possibility of a further appeal to the UK Supreme Court in London because settlement discussions can only get down to the business of serious negotiations if this threat is removed.
I think this is a very fair point to raise directly with Glasgow's MSPs and MPs including the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, especially as the deadline for any appeal is just one week away, i.e. next Wednesday 17 January 2018.
I have been raising the issue with MSPs and MPs in recent weeks, but the time is now right for individual claimants across Glasgow to make their voices heard.
The best way to do this would be for people to contact their local MSPs and MPs to ask their views on this subject and what they are doing to support their local constituents - by email, Facebook and Twitter.
I will post some thoughts on the blog site to help people get their point across, but Glasgow's politicians know what's going on for the past 10 years and if you ask me it's high time they stood up and spoke out.
More to follow - so spread the word far and wide, encourage your friends and co-workers to get involved and watch this space.
Are You Listening Glasgow? (08/01/18)
Here's the no-holds barred resignation letter from Carrie Gracie, the BBC's former China editor who has accused the corporation of operating blatantly discriminatory pay arrangements.
Now the situation in Glasgow City Council, Scotland's largest council by far, is even worse if you ask me.
Because after a 10 year long fight Scotland highest civil court, the Court of Session, issued a damning judgement in which it described Glasgow's WPBR pay scheme as 'unfit for purpose'.
Yet senior officials in the council are still fighting a desperate rearguard action, with talk of further appeals, instead of putting their hands up, apologising to the council's predominantly female workforce and finally admitting that they've made a terrible mess of dealing with equal pay over the years.
I think I'll drop Carrie Gracie a note to wish her well and draw her attention to what's going on in Glasgow where Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is a local MSP, of course.
Dear BBC Audience,
My name is Carrie Gracie and I have been a BBC journalist for three decades. With great regret, I have left my post as China Editor to speak out publicly on a crisis of trust at the BBC.
The BBC belongs to you, the licence fee payer. I believe you have a right to know that it is breaking equality law and resisting pressure for a fair and transparent pay structure.
In thirty years at the BBC, I have never sought to make myself the story and never publicly criticised the organisation I love. I am not asking for more money. I believe I am very well paid already – especially as someone working for a publicly funded organisation. I simply want the BBC to abide by the law and value men and women equally.
On pay, the BBC is not living up to its stated values of trust, honesty and accountability. Salary disclosures the BBC was forced to make six months ago revealed not only unacceptably high pay for top presenters and managers but also an indefensible pay gap between men and women doing equal work. These revelations damaged the trust of BBC staff. For the first time, women saw hard evidence of what they’d long suspected, that they are not being valued equally.
Many have since sought pay equality through internal negotiation but managers still deny there is a problem. This bunker mentality is likely to end in a disastrous legal defeat for the BBC and an exodus of female talent at every level.
Mine is just one story of inequality among many, but I hope it will help you understand why I feel obliged to speak out.
I am a China specialist, fluent in Mandarin and with nearly three decades of reporting the story. Four years ago, the BBC urged me to take the newly created post of China Editor.
I knew the job would demand sacrifices and resilience. I would have to work 5000 miles from my teenage children, and in a heavily censored one-party state I would face surveillance, police harassment and official intimidation.
I accepted the challenges while stressing to my bosses that I must be paid equally with my male peers. Like many other BBC women, I had long suspected that I was routinely paid less, and at this point in my career, I was determined not to let it happen again. Believing that I had secured pay parity with men in equivalent roles, I set off for Beijing.
In the past four years, the BBC has had four international editors - two men and two women. The Equality Act 2010 states that men and women doing equal work must receive equal pay. But last July I learned that in the previous financial year, the two men earned at least 50% more than the two women.
Despite the BBC’s public insistence that my appointment demonstrated its commitment to gender equality, and despite my own insistence that equality was a condition of taking up the post, my managers had yet again judged that women's work was worth much less than men's.
My bewilderment turned to dismay when I heard the BBC complain of being forced to make these pay disclosures. Without them, I and many other BBC women would never have learned the truth.
I told my bosses the only acceptable resolution would be for all the international editors to be paid the same amount. The right amount would be for them to decide, and I made clear I wasn't seeking a pay rise, just equal pay. Instead the BBC offered me a big pay rise which remained far short of equality. It said there were differences between roles which justified the pay gap, but it has refused to explain these differences. Since turning down an unequal pay rise, I have been subjected to a dismayingly incompetent and undermining grievance process which still has no outcome.
Enough is enough. The rise of China is one of the biggest stories of our time and one of the hardest to tell. I cannot do it justice while battling my bosses and a byzantine complaints process. Last week I left my role as China Editor and will now return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.
For BBC women this is not just a matter of one year’s salary or two. Taking into account disadvantageous contracts and pension entitlements, it is a gulf that will last a lifetime. Many of the women affected are not highly paid ‘stars’ but hard-working producers on modest salaries. Often women from ethnic minorities suffer wider pay gaps than the rest.
This is not the gender pay gap that the BBC admits to. It is not men earning more because they do more of the jobs which pay better. It is men earning more in the same jobs or jobs of equal value. It is pay discrimination and it is illegal.
On learning the shocking scale of inequality last July, BBC women began to come together to tackle the culture of secrecy that helps perpetuate it. We shared our pay details and asked male colleagues to do the same.
Meanwhile the BBC conducted various reviews. The outgoing Director of News said last month, “We did a full equal pay audit which showed there is equal pay across the BBC.” But this was not a full audit. It excluded the women with the biggest pay gaps. The BBC has now begun a ‘talent review’ but the women affected have no confidence in it. Up to two hundred BBC women have made pay complaints only to be told repeatedly there is no pay discrimination at the BBC. Can we all be wrong? I no longer trust our management to give an honest answer.
In fact, the only BBC women who can be sure they do not suffer pay discrimination are senior managers whose salaries are published. For example, we have a new, female, Director of News who did not have to fight to earn the same as her male predecessor because his £340 000 salary was published and so was hers. Elsewhere, pay secrecy makes BBC women as vulnerable as they are in many other workplaces.
How to put things right?
The BBC must admit the problem, apologise and set in place an equal, fair and transparent pay structure. To avoid wasting your licence fee on an unwinnable court fight against female staff, the BBC should immediately agree to independent arbitration to settle individual cases.
Patience and good will are running out. In the six months since July’s revelations, the BBC has attempted a botched solution based on divide and rule. It has offered some women pay ‘revisions’ which do not guarantee equality, while locking down other women in a protracted complaints process.
We have felt trapped. Speaking out carries the risk of disciplinary measures or even dismissal; litigation can destroy careers and be financially ruinous. What's more the BBC often settles cases out of court and demands non-disclosure agreements, a habit unworthy of an organisation committed to truth, and one which does nothing to resolve the systemic problem.
None of this is an indictment of individual managers. I am grateful for their personal support and for their editorial integrity in the face of censorship pressure in China. But for far too long, a secretive and illegal BBC pay culture has inflicted dishonourable choices on those who enforce it. This must change.
Meanwhile we are by no means the only workplace with hidden pay discrimination and the pressure for transparency is only growing. I hope rival news organisations will not use this letter as a stick with which to beat the BBC, but instead reflect on their own equality issues.
It is painful to leave my China post abruptly and to say goodbye to the team in the BBC’s Beijing bureau. But most of them are brilliant young women. I don’t want their generation to have to fight this battle in the future because my generation failed to win it now.
To women of any age in any workplace who are confronting pay discrimination, I wish you the solidarity of a strong sisterhood and the support of male colleagues.
It is a century since women first won the right to vote in Britain. Let us honour that brave generation by making this the year we win equal pay.
Carrie Gracie
The BBC must admit the problem, apologise and set in place an equal, fair and transparent pay structure. To avoid wasting your licence fee on an unwinnable court fight against female staff, the BBC should immediately agree to independent arbitration to settle individual cases.
Patience and good will are running out. In the six months since July’s revelations, the BBC has attempted a botched solution based on divide and rule. It has offered some women pay ‘revisions’ which do not guarantee equality, while locking down other women in a protracted complaints process.
We have felt trapped. Speaking out carries the risk of disciplinary measures or even dismissal; litigation can destroy careers and be financially ruinous. What's more the BBC often settles cases out of court and demands non-disclosure agreements, a habit unworthy of an organisation committed to truth, and one which does nothing to resolve the systemic problem.
None of this is an indictment of individual managers. I am grateful for their personal support and for their editorial integrity in the face of censorship pressure in China. But for far too long, a secretive and illegal BBC pay culture has inflicted dishonourable choices on those who enforce it. This must change.
Meanwhile we are by no means the only workplace with hidden pay discrimination and the pressure for transparency is only growing. I hope rival news organisations will not use this letter as a stick with which to beat the BBC, but instead reflect on their own equality issues.
It is painful to leave my China post abruptly and to say goodbye to the team in the BBC’s Beijing bureau. But most of them are brilliant young women. I don’t want their generation to have to fight this battle in the future because my generation failed to win it now.
To women of any age in any workplace who are confronting pay discrimination, I wish you the solidarity of a strong sisterhood and the support of male colleagues.
It is a century since women first won the right to vote in Britain. Let us honour that brave generation by making this the year we win equal pay.
Carrie Gracie
Glasgow - Equal Pay Update (08/01/18)
A Glasgow reader hit the nail on the head with this comment on the big decision facing the City Council over its WPBR pay scheme which has been judged to be 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court.
"We will find out in next couple of weeks what Susan Aitken's and the SNP's true colours are. When they sorted out the janitors dispute after they came into power they weren't slow taking credit.
"So as far as I am concerned if they do appeal the buck stops at Susan Aitken and the SNP. At the last appeal they said it was clarity (got that from the judges) now I for one could never vote for the SNP again if they run off to London to appeal. In my eyes they would have lost all credibility."
A
To be fair, I think it's pretty clear that a big battle is being fought behind the scenes between elected councillors and senior officials.
But the discriminatory nature of Glasgow's WPBR pay arrangements are there for all to see and have now been laid bare in a powerful and unanimous judgment in Scotland's highest civil court.
The three judges were so unimpressed at the City Council's case that they went on to reject, unanimously again, Glasgow's application seeking 'leave to appeal' to the UK Supreme Court in London.
The fact is that the senior officials who have been defending the WPBR pay scheme are reluctant to admit that they got it badly wrong - that they let Glasgow's lowest paid workers down and carried on making a terrible mess of equal pay for another 10 years.
'Facts are chiels that winna ding', as Robert Burns once wrote and if you ask me this all comes down to who really runs the City Council.
To be fair, I think it's pretty clear that a big battle is being fought behind the scenes between elected councillors and senior officials.
But the discriminatory nature of Glasgow's WPBR pay arrangements are there for all to see and have now been laid bare in a powerful and unanimous judgment in Scotland's highest civil court.
The three judges were so unimpressed at the City Council's case that they went on to reject, unanimously again, Glasgow's application seeking 'leave to appeal' to the UK Supreme Court in London.
The fact is that the senior officials who have been defending the WPBR pay scheme are reluctant to admit that they got it badly wrong - that they let Glasgow's lowest paid workers down and carried on making a terrible mess of equal pay for another 10 years.
'Facts are chiels that winna ding', as Robert Burns once wrote and if you ask me this all comes down to who really runs the City Council.
