Glasgow Council leader denies equal pay talks have collapsed

Glasgow City Council Leader has denied accusations that equal pay negotiations have collapsed, saying they are still underway and on time.

In a tweet, Susan Aitken rebuked accusations from Labour that thousands of women had chosen to strike after negotiations with Glasgow City Council had failed.

Aitken said: “Equal pay negotiations have not ‘collapsed’; they are continuing” and that the timescale of when payments are to be made is well on track.

This was in response to a tweet by Labour’s communities and equalities spokeswoman, Monica Lennon.

Lennon said: "[These women] deserve pay justice and they deserve it now. It should never have reached this point and on behalf of Scottish Labour I apologise that the legacy of pay inequality wasn’t resolved when our party led Glasgow City Council.

"An apology, however, doesn’t pay the bills. The SNP came into power having promised to settle but women are still being failed.”

Aitken hit back at Labour, saying: “Gender pay injustice was not just ‘not resolved’ by Labour; it was perpetuated.”

Lennon’s post was in response to thousands of women voting to take strike action against Glasgow City Council. Up to 5,000 women may attend a mass walkout, including school support staff, cleaners and catering workers.

What are the equal pay claims about?

It dates back to 2006 when a Job Evaluation Scheme was introduced to end gender pay inequality.

However, the scheme was ruled to be discriminatory as there was a 3-year protection scheme for men to cushion the loss of bonuses.

How much may Glasgow City Council payout?

The lawyer acting for thousands of the women involved in equal pay claims has claimed the bill to settle the claims could reach up to £1B. Susan Aitken has denounced these comments saying they were “plucked out of thin air”.

Birmingham experienced a similar pay equal claim which resulted in a £1B payout.

Comments

“Free delivery is killing off stores” – The Decline of the Forge Shopping Centre

The Forge is 30 years old this month Back in the late 1980s, the Forge Shopping Centre was a phoenix rising from the ashes of what was once Scotland’s largest steelworks. At the heart of the engineering and shipbuilding conglomerate William Beardmore and Company Parkhead Forge employed over 20,000 people at its peak. But with deindustrialisation and a stint of different owners the Forge as a steelworks site closed for good in 1983. Then in 1988, the Forge Shopping Centre opened to the public. Built under the GEAR (Glasgow East Area Renewal) scheme it was intended to bring development potential to the East End under Europe’s largest urban regeneration project. At the time the Forge broke new grounds with the largest supermarket in Scotland but in recent times it has been dwarfed by the likes of Silverburn in Pollock (over 3 times the size of the Forge) and faces stiff competition from the erection of 13 newly opened stores since its inception. “It’s getting real...

Glasgow Councillor: Tories aren’t inspiring young people

Shettleston Councillor, Thomas Kerr Thomas Kerr is not your stereotypical Tory: no private education, no nanny growing up, no connections to Eton and no silver spoon wedged firmly wedged between his teeth. In fact, he is the exact opposite. He grew up in a high rise in Cranhill and attended Eastbank Academy, a school in Shettleston. From a young age he’s had to deal with parents addicted to drugs. Kerr was disadvantaged from the start but didn’t let that stop him from achieving the impossible (or at least implausible): a seat in the East-End of Glasgow’s Shettleston ward. A ward that only a few years ago was reported to have a life expectancy lower than that of war-torn Iraq. Kerr explains he is a Tory, not despite growing up poor, but because he grew up poor. “To me the only party that offered somebody from a working-class background, like myself, opportunity was the Conservatives. “To me, the SNP and Labour’s ideology is to try to keep people in their b...

The Trump conundrum: why scandals don’t sink him

President Donald Trump famously said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would continue to support him. And he has a point. Since the start of his scandal-struck presidency, Trump’s approval ratings have lingered at around 40%. By no means good, but with a record-breaking turnover rate of top staff at the White House, numerous charges brought against a plethora of campaign staff and countless other scandals it’s remarkable that Trump has maintained the support he has. It's avid too. One look at a packed campaign rally with an audience shouting “lock her up” shows a president with an immensely die-hard base. The Pew Research Centre says: “ Political polarization – the vast and growing gap between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats – is a defining feature of American politics today”. A 2017 Pew poll showed that 43% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats have a negative view of the opposing party. These stats can be exemplified in real...

Craig Meighan

Search This Blog