How working-class unity and fighting trade unions delivered
Birmingham City Council is trying to slash bin workers’ pay by up to £8,000, re-grading their roles. Workers in Unite have been on all-out strike since May in response. The Labour council blames, among other things, the cost of settling equal pay claims for its financial difficulties. In Brighton, the GMB reports £30 million worth of equal pay claims against the Labour council.
In 2018, a two-day strike of 8,000 workers, including solidarity action from bin workers refusing to cross picket lines, won around £550 million from the council. A further £300 million was paid out in 2023 after workers threatened more strikes.
Socialist Party Scotland member Brian Smith, who was Glasgow City Unison Branch Secretary from 2009-2024, revisits lessons from the Glasgow struggle
In 2006, Glasgow City Council, then Labour controlled, implemented a new job evaluation scheme and pay system in an effort to meet the aims of a national single status agreement between local government trade unions and council employers. This national agreement was a framework to eliminate unequal pay between male and female-dominated jobs across Scotland’s 32 councils and associated organisations, however councils could choose not to use the recommended national job evaluation scheme and there was no suggested national pay system. These were two of the main weaknesses in the single status agreement approved by the trade unions in 1999.
The Glasgow Council leadership decided to implement a uniquely amended version of a job evaluation scheme used by London councils, and an equally unusual pay structure. These decisions were driven by the wish to keep costs down and not deliver equal pay, and an arrogance that Glasgow was somehow different from other Scottish councils due to its size.
Between 2007 and 2017, there were 18 Unison formal strike ballots across the council, with 15 related to job evaluation and/or the pay structure. Some were resolved without the need for action, however 11 saw strike action take place. Some strikes involved large groups; others saw small numbers taking action. Some strikes lasted weeks or months; others a few days. In total, over 3,000 Unison members took strike action at some point during this period, the majority women.
At the same time as the implementation of these pay arrangements, the council also set up a number of arms-length organisations supposedly to enhance some services’ ability to bid for contracts out with the council, without falling foul of EU competition rules.
One of these was Cordia, a council-owned company that saw thousands of female workers Tupe-transferred in services such as home care, cleaning and catering. The primary reason for Cordia was to try and minimise any future equal pay claims by artificially moving female-dominated manual jobs ‘further away’ in employment terms from male manual jobs in cleansing and roads, so reducing the scope for legal comparisons.
Terms and conditions attack
Cordia also attacked the workforce’s terms and conditions over the years with cuts in overtime rates, public holidays and national pay rises not being applied to shift allowances. The council’s plan fell apart in the longer term due to an employment tribunal win for the equal pay claimants in 2014 which showed that Cordia was still really part of the council – with comparisons to male-dominated jobs in other council services justified – and a political campaign, led by the trade unions, that saw Cordia wound-up in 2018 and all the workers transferred back to the council.
In 2012, Unison membership was only 600 in Cordia and an organising and recruitment campaign was launched by the local socialist-led Glasgow City Unison branch. By 2018, the Unison membership had grown to over 2,300. Combined with the historical GMB membership it meant that the vast of majority of the near 7,000 Cordia workforce was now unionised.
Over the years, many union members had gone to the private solicitors Action4Equality (led by Stefan Cross) for assistance and legal representation in their individual equal pay claims. Many had felt let down by the legal advice provided by their trade unions around 2006-07, particularly those in Cordia. Several Action4Equality claimants started a Facebook page as a communication and organising tool. Unison began to lodge individual claims again around 2008. The GMB and Unite began similar processes in the years that followed. It is important to acknowledge the key role played by Action4Equality in the fight for equal pay compensation in Glasgow.
In mid-2017, the Court of Session ruled that the council’s pay structure did not comply with equal pay law. The council was going to have to pay out compensation for years of pay discrimination – now the issues were to who, how much and when.
By this time, the legal teams of Action4Equailty and Unison had been working together for a number of years. The joint lawyers team and the local trade union branches now needed to work even closer in an ‘inside and outside the room’ approach if an acceptable outcome was to be secured.
Members across the three trade unions wanted a united campaign, bringing together claimants irrespective of who their legal representatives were. Members’ meetings were held to build the campaign. Claimants were encouraged to take on organising and speaking roles at protests, demos and lobbies of the council in late 2017 and early 2018. By May 2018, it was clear that the council, then a Scottish National Party (SNP) administration, was not willing to table an acceptable package of compensation payments and the trade unions moved to organise strike ballots.
The Unison ballot in Cordia returned a 99% vote for strike, in education it was 90%. The GMB achieved similar results. Over 5,000 Unison members would now take strike action alongside 3,000 GMB members.
The strike on 23-24 October 2018 was a profound experience for all involved. An opportunity to strike for equality – a strike where the result could deliver a crushing blow to a pay system which had systematically discriminated against women workers and win back millions of pounds in stolen wages.
The picket lines were among the noisiest and most visible ever seen. Around 600 bin workers refused to cross picket lines in support of their women trade union colleagues, many of who were their relatives, family friends or neighbours.
The atmosphere at the city centre rally was incredible, with a minute’s silence for those claimants who had passed away while waiting for equal pay. The speeches by the women claimants were some of the most memorable and moving witnessed in the city.
Two-day strike
The two-day strike was one of the largest on equal pay ever and was covered by both national and international media. The strike forced the council to table an acceptable package of compensation payments. Around £550 million was won for over 12,000 claimants. It was one of the single, largest redistributions of wealth Glasgow has ever seen.
The trade unions now had to ensure that the council introduced a new equality-proofed job evaluation scheme and pay system which would eliminate unequal pay moving forward. Due to the Covid pandemic and other issues on the council side this work was delayed and a further £300 million was paid out in compensation payments in 2023. But only after the trade unions had to again ballot thousands of members for strike action to force the council to maintain the 2018 approach for all claimants.
The council is now using the nationally recommended job evaluation scheme to assess all jobs and negotiations on a new pay system are ongoing.
Over the years, the trade unions’ position on the new arrangements is that they must deliver equal pay and fair pay for all. Those who have been discriminated against for decades must get proper pay increases. There should be no levelling down of other workers’ wages in an attempt to deliver bargain basement equality – no robbing Peter to pay Pauline, so to speak.
Equal pay and fair pay cannot be done on the cheap. The fight for significant, additional annual funding into the wage bill is one for all workers, all trade unionists.
The lessons of Glasgow’s equal pay struggle is that by mobilising the fighting capacity of trade union members in determined action victories can be won that benefit all workers.
