Delivering pay justice for the women of Glasgow

The women who have been discriminated against won their case the day I was elected Leader of Glasgow City Council.

Everything since then has been a process of delivering justice.

I am entirely on their side and understand the frustration and contempt they must feel that Labour failed to deliver pay justice for over a decade.

Considerable progress is being made, not just on the settlement, as utterly pivotal as that is, but in dismantling the deeply embedded discriminatory practices and structures.

Firstly, we have agreed to abandon the discredited pay and grading system introduced by Labour in 2006 and defended by it for more than a decade afterwards.

It will soon be replaced by a fairer system used by the vast majority of other Scottish councils and which should have been put in place by Labour in the first place.

Make no mistake, this decision and adherence to a discriminatory pay scheme comes at a massive cost, but it is one that must rightly be paid.

This is where the discrimination against the women that we support lay and it will cost the city hundreds of millions of pounds to resolve.

But Cordia, where most of the affected women are employed, is now back in council hands – as this SNP administration promised it would be – as they and their representatives requested.

This had made the city more accountable for the social care services it provides.

And we continue to work to a negotiated settlement by the end of 2018. It will be an agreed and a fair settlement.

I have massive respect for the women involved but I wish the strike wasn’t called. But now we must all look forward, together.

The fight is won, we need to turn our collective attention to getting back around the table, agreeing a settlement and delivering the pay justice that has been denied to women in this city for too long.