Delivering equal pay justice in Glasgow

In political life, there is hypocrisy, there is breathtaking hypocrisy, and then there is the Scottish Labour party dealing with equal pay in Glasgow.

For over a decade, watching Labour handle the rights of low-paid women workers in our city was like watching a clumsy juggler juggling flaming torches, only to set fire to the stage, and then charge the audience for the privilege of watching the blaze.

This month, after years of painstaking work, it is the SNP administration in Glasgow that has stepped up to douse the flames, undo decades of structural injustice, and usher in a new era of fairness.

The approval of Glasgow City Council’s new pay and grading system marks a momentous milestone. It is a decisive move that will deliver an equitable structure for nearly 24,000 non-teaching council workers – bringing decades of pay discrimination to a firm and final end.

To fully appreciate what has been achieved, one must look back at the staggering ruin left behind by the Labour party in Glasgow.

The story began in 2006, when the then-Labour-run council introduced a deeply flawed pay-review system. It was a scheme that protected the earnings of male-dominated jobs while leaving female-dominated roles – like carers, cleaners, and caterers – out in the cold.

When the those women employees pointed out this obvious injustice, Labour’s response was not to fix it. Instead, they buried their heads in the sand, locked the door, and spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money trying to fight their own workers in court.

Figures revealed that between 2007 and 2017 alone, Labour spent over £2.5 million fighting equal pay claims in the courts – including £1.8 million in legal fees and over £700,000 in internal staff costs.

Rather than sitting down with trade unions to fix the problem, Labour threw public money at high-priced legal teams to defend a system the Court of Session ruled was completely unfit for purpose.

By dragging out legal challenges Labour inflated the eventual compensation bill to a eye-watering £770 million, and left the city’s finances burdened for a generation.

When the SNP took control of Glasgow City Council in 2017, they inherited a toxic legacy. But instead of continuing Labour’s strategy of delay, deny, and litigate, the SNP administration immediately pledged to deliver pay justice.

Years of painstaking negotiations followed to rebuild a broken system from the ground up.

Now, that hard work has borne fruit with the council administration voted to push forward a new pay structure that will create a fairer, modern grading system for the vast majority of workers.

Under this scheme:

• 63% of workers will see an increase in pay

• 26% will see no change

• Pay increases will be backdated to October 2023

What was Scottish Labour’s contribution to this historic vote? Did they apologise for creating the crisis in the first place? Did they offer constructive solutions?

Of course not. Labour councillors lined up to vote against the agreement.

Labour complaining about the complexities of resolving an equal pay crisis they created and actively prolonged is like a driver who drove the bus off a cliff whinging that the tow truck is taking too long to pull it back up.

They engineered the discrimination, spent millions defending it, ran away when the bill came due, and now have the audacity to stand on the sidelines hurling brickbats at the people cleaning up another of their wrecks.

If Labour had simply sorted this out when the issue first arose two decades ago, it would have cost a fraction of the price, spared thousands of female workers years of anxiety, and saved millions in wasted legal fees.

Their performance as champions of the workforce would be comedic if it weren’t so insultingly cynical to the workers who fought them for years.

While Westminster-obsessed parties like Labour and the Tories play tactical political games, it is the SNP firmly focused on what matters: delivering real, tangible results for the people of Scotland.

Whether it is navigating complex legacy disputes, protecting local services, or standing up for working people against the fallout of decisions made by out-of-touch Westminster parties, the SNP has proven once again that it is the only party prepared to do the heavy lifting.

Glasgow’s women fought for decades for equal pay. It was Labour that denied them justice, but it is the SNP that has finally delivered it.