iStockGlasgow City Council has agreed a plan to bring its long-running equal pay dispute to an end – as unions warn of a “devastating effect” on workers who will see their wages cut.
After eight years of negotiations, the SNP administration and Green group voted to push ahead with an overhaul of the council’s pay and grading structure.
It will involve the phased roll-out of new terms and conditions for just under 24,000 non-teaching staff from April next year, and replaces a 2006 scheme which discriminated against women workers.
Unions gathered outside Glasgow’s city chambers ahead of Thursday’s meeting to demand councillors vote against the proposal. They said thousands of staff are facing significant financial loss.
The new system will see 63% of those affected gain financially, while 11% will have their wages reduced. The highest drop in wages is expected to be around £11,500.
A late change to the council’s plan means pay protection, for workers facing a cut, is extended from six months to one year.
Letters are set to be sent out to staff explaining the impact on them, and unions are expected to ballot their members on the deal.
Council leader Susan Aitken, SNP, said the new scheme “ends Labour’s discriminatory pay arrangements”.
“Over 60% of our staff will be receiving a pay increase, and for those at detriment we have secured an extended pay protection deal and will continue to work with unions at every stage of the process,” she added.
Labour had put forward an amendment which asked for further talks with trade unions and to bring in the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) to help resolve the dispute.
They also wanted councillors to rule out the potential dismissal and re-engagement of employees, saying “fire and rehire” tactics are incompatible with positive industrial relations.
Cllr Rashid Hussain, Glasgow Labour leader, said: “We are bitterly disappointed that the SNP and Greens have chosen to force through incomplete proposals while serious concerns from Glasgow’s workforce and their trade unions remain unresolved.”
He added: “If relations with the trade unions deteriorate or workers are threatened with fire and rehire, they cannot say they were not warned.
“They need to get back around the table, rebuild the trust they have damaged and deliver equal pay with Glasgow’s workforce, not impose it upon them.”
Labour also opposed a decision to suspend the “call-in procedure”, which made so the process can continue more quickly.
Cllr Aitken said Labour, the “architects of pay discrimination” in Glasgow, had “voted to continue that pay discrimination and put the city’s finances at further risk”.
“Thankfully, they are no longer in a position to subject Glasgow to their ineptitude, and a new pay and grading system was agreed, ending pay discrimination for 1000s of mainly female workers in the city.
“The SNP promised to deliver justice for those workers who have faced pay discrimination, and today we have done that.”
An amendment from the Greens, proposed by new co-leader, Cllr Lana Reid-McConnell, was accepted. It added that it is “in the best interests of all concerned to reach a collective agreement” and for a letter to be sent to the Scottish and UK Governments for “steps necessary to ensure timely implementation ahead of the budget-setting processes”.
Cllr Reid-McConnell said: “Staff have been waiting a significant amount of time for information on what this means for them.
“We feel Labour’s proposal would delay that notification… adding additional stress and preventing those conversations and steps to further support those facing detriment.”
She added that the context of “insufficient settlements” from both governments couldn’t be ignored. Labour called on the Scottish Government to “step up and provide the funding Glasgow needs to deliver equal pay properly”.
Cllr Aitken said: “I understand why people want to go and ask governments to bail us out on this but I have to emphasise this is a Glasgow problem that was made in Glasgow.
“No government told Glasgow City Council to adopt a discriminatory pay and grading scheme in 2006.”
Ahead of the meeting, the joint trade unions — UNISON, Unite and the GMB — had sent a letter to all councillors on the city administration committee.
It stated they believed “a vote to accept would not only have a devastating effect on the lives of workers and their families, the services that Glasgow City Council delivers on a daily basis but would also embed a structure that carries huge risks that would be incredibly difficult to untangle”.
Agreements were reached in 2019 and 2022 on pay claims with thousands of mainly female workers who have been paid less than men in equivalent roles. Compensation payments totalling £770m have been made.
But a new pay and grading structure is required to end pay discrimination. A council report estimates the cost of rolling out the new structure will be over £120m. Pay is set to be backdated to October 2023.
Around 80% of staff have had their roles evaluated and are set to move onto the proposed structure in April. The remaining workers would transition as the evaluation process continues.
The council, alongside trade unions, has been working on the new scheme since early 2018.
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