Row over equal pay continues with protest in Glasgow

Workers will gather outside the city chambers later to protest Glasgow City Council's response to the row over equal pay.

Unions say the local authority is dragging its feet to pay settlements to some women who were awarded compensation in a 2019 agreement.

They have also projected the new scheme to address gender pay inequality wouldn't be in place for at least another 2 years.

The deal in 2019, after the last strike, saw interim payments made to thousands of workers up to 31 March 2018.

In a joint statement, the unions said workers are being expected to wait until at least 2024 – six years after their initial payment – for the next step in addressing ongoing gender pay discrimination in Glasgow.

Kath Stirling, UNISON branch chairperson, said:

"Thousands of workers, overwhelmingly women, were paid out in 2019 because their pay was unequal - nothing has changed since then, it’s still unequal.

"The same jobs in the same unequal pay scheme. Yet the council is now refusing to pay up and trying to exclude many jobs. The council’s actions are a cynical ploy to divide trade unionists.

The trade unions are demanding that the council apply the 2019 arrangements to those claimants who have never received anything – so-called “new claims” - and also use the 2019 arrangements to calculate a new round of interim payments for all eligible workers because of the delay in implementing the new pay and grading system.

"The fight for pay equality in Glasgow is far from over.

We will be outside the city chambers on Thursday. The ballot papers go out from 31 January"

A spokesman said: “Staff are, of course, entitled to voice any concerns they have. However, the terms of the ballot they have been asked to take part in simply do not reflect what we had, until this week, believed were constructive, ongoing and confidential negotiations.

“The introduction of the new pay and grading scheme has been delayed by Covid. That delay was agreed by unions, which play a key role in the governance of the project. The process requires hundreds of face-to-face interviews, which unions themselves felt should not go ahead during the pandemic.”

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