I don't know whether the SNP council have been lax in resolving the issue of equal pay by Glasgow council, but the hypocrisy of Labour politicians and the Trade Unions is staggering.
Hundreds of schools and nurseries in Glasgow are closed and home care services faced disruption yesterday as council workers staged one of Britain’s biggest strikes over equal pay.
The walkout – which involves more than 8,000 workers – started at 7am on Tuesday and follows years of legal disputes between unions and Glasgow City Council (GCC) over claims that staff in female-dominated roles, such as cleaning, were underpaid.
Some women claim they made up to £3-an-hour less than those in male-dominated roles, such as bin collections. Some women are said to have been paid up to £4,000-a-year less than male counterparts.
Thousands of female workers are proceeding with claims against the council following a court of session ruling last year.
Members of the GMB and Unison unions are striking amid a “lack of progress” on equal pay claims from thousands of female workers, the unions said.
Ir received mesages of support from major Labour leaders.
I send my solidarity to women council workers in Glasgow who go on strike today to demand equal pay. They are the carers, cleaners and caterers who are society's unsung heroes. When they go on strike, it's our duty to support them. #GlasgowWomensStrike
So it was the Unions and the Labour party standing up to the SNP run Glasgow council on behalf of low pay workers.
Bad SNP
Er. Not Quite.
This by Dani Garavelli in the Scotsman, one of the few "journalists who explained the true facts about the strike.
Remember who caused mess as Glasgow women strike
Not everybody was prepared to be as generous as Ms Garavelli
The Unions seem to think that at times they are there to support the Labour Party, rather than their members .
Yesterday's strike may have been for a worthy cause , but it seems that it was not for a worthy reason.
It was the decision in 2006 by the then Labour administration to implement a discriminatory pay and grades structure, and the decision of later ones to oppose the women’s consequent pay claims, that created this shambles.Those decisions were facilitated (some would say driven) by male-dominated unions, including the GMB, which were all too happy to see their male workers’ pay and bonuses protected.When the SNP took control last year, it accepted the women had been underpaid and pledged to resolve the claims, even though it understood the issue would cast a shadow over its first term and potentially deprive it of a second.
It may well be true, as Action 4 Equality claims, that it is failing to deliver on that pledge. The organisation says the council officers leading the negotiations – the very same council officers who advised previous administrations not to settle – are still proving uncooperative.And yet, the SNP has achieved three major goals: it ended the court action, it brought Cordia, the arms-length organisation for homecarers , back in-house and it scrapped the discredited pay and grades scheme and replaced it with a new one.I am not cynical enough to suggest the GMB is only standing up for female members now because the SNP is in charge, though there were no equal pay strikes under Labour; I prefer to believe it has more to do with the fact that the union now has two women – Rhea Wolfson (the Labour candidate for Livingston) and Hazel Nolan – as regional organisers.In any case, it would be a strange thing to criticise a trade union for finally doing its job. But I do think some humility on the part of both the GMB and Unison, which was also slow to offer support, would be welcome. As for those Labour politicians attacking the SNP administration over equal pay: they are shameless and must take us all for fools. Do they really think our attention spans are so short?
Not everybody was prepared to be as generous as Ms Garavelli
- Complete coincidence that the GMB organisers of #GlasgowWomensStrike are Labour candidates who were stony silent during this. No gleeful excitement to help women gain their rightful pay then. This strike is shameless opportunism.
The Unions seem to think that at times they are there to support the Labour Party, rather than their members .
Yesterday's strike may have been for a worthy cause , but it seems that it was not for a worthy reason.
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