Solidarity

Thousands of women council workers across Glasgow plan to bring the city to a standstill this week in what is believed to be the biggest equal pay strike seen in the UK.

More than 8,000 workers, mostly women who have never been on a picket line, will take part in the two-day action that starts on Tuesday and will affect homecare, schools and nurseries, cleaning and catering services across the city.

The dispute stems from 2006, when a new job evaluation scheme was introduced by the then Labour-run council, with the aim of addressing gender pay inequality. Instead, say the women affected, it entrenched discrimination by paying female-dominated jobs such as catering and cleaning less than male-dominated jobs such as refuse collection, despite them being deemed of equal value, because of a complex system that penalised people working split-shifts and irregular hours.

The scheme also built in a three-year payment protection for men who lost out on bonuses, which was only last year ruled discriminatory by the court of session in Edinburgh. A 12-year battle has been fought through the tribunals and courts. Many hoped it would be expedited when, after decades of Labour control, the SNP won the council elections in May 2017 on a manifesto that promised to settle the claims.

Describing the negotiations that followed as a sham, the lawyer Stefan Cross, who represents 8,000 of the claimants, said the council had repeatedly refused to engage with any of the underlying legal issues or state its own position across nearly 12 months and 21 meetings, before ditching a timetable suggested by the claimants and stating it would provide them with an offer in December.

“It’s just not good enough. An offer should be the product of negotiations, not the start. The women themselves demanded a ballot for strike action after that because their employer was refusing to negotiate,” he said.

The ballot results were overwhelming: 99% of Unison members and 98% of GMB members were in favour of action.

Shona Thomson, a homecare worker for 18 years and also her GMB branch secretary, said it was patronising to suggest the women were being exploited by their unions. “It’s the cleaners, carers and caterers who pushed for the strike,” she said. “We’ve been shouting about it since last year, and the union listened to us. We’ve got to the end of our tether with it.” For Thomson, the spur for striking goes beyond the headline issue of equal pay. “Low-paid woman are always fearful about losing their jobs, but we realised that we’re worth more than this,” she said. “It’s not just about equal pay but the changes we’ve seen, the increased workload, pressure, split shifts. The majority of these women are over 45 and have been doing their jobs for 20 years. We’re not seen by the city but we keep the cogs turning, working behind the scenes. I love my job but I’ve come to realise that I’m a strong woman who can speak out and say, ‘this isn’t right’.”

GMB organiser Rhea Wolfson said the reason for council intransigence was obvious. She said: “We were negotiating with the same officials who were advising their Labour predecessors to continue litigation against us for years.”