Rob Shorrock

In my experience the public sector has a rather shameful record on equality matters in employment and it comes as no surprise that equal pay claims are going through the roof. The Guardian leads today with ‘Councils face 2.8bn bill for equal pay'. The principle of paying people doing jobs of equal value equally should be a pretty straight-forward principle, but across the public sector women, often in part-time positions are on average 17% worse off than male colleagues doing equivalent jobs.

This issue has been brought into hard focus by Stefan Cross a former legal adviser with Thompsons a legal firm working with many trade unions. He has been representing women on a no win no fee basis on this matter to employment tribunals. He claims to have represented over 30,000 women - clearly rather successfully, as Local Government Employers, and some of the trade unions are squealing about the impact of these claims on local government finances and services in the future.

It is not an exaggeration to observe this sorry mess and see that it is a consequence of what can only be described as ‘institutionalised sexism' in the public sector. It has happened as an indirect consequence of unions and employers negotiating arrangements that have had the consequence of discriminating against women - pay structures based on unbroken service, protecting salaries after job evaluation with the effect that many women workers would never get a chance of reaching equivalence with their male counterparts. Let us not forget, that it is only recently that part-time workers won the legal right to join pension schemes.

It is so clear that many women workers have been let down by their employers and their unions and they are absolutely right to seek redress with the help of legal advisers through employment tribunals. One of the key reasons the number of employment tribunal cases has increased is most probably down to the number of equal pay claims being taken, a factor the government should take into account before introducing compulsory arbitration. (see here)

The job of trade unions is to represent their members legal rights, regardless of who they are and what jobs they do. It is staggering then to read that senior union officials are, in effect, criticising their own members for exercising legal rights. The director of organising and membership at Unison, states in the Guardian, "court cases are threatening the whole system of organising equal pay" and this is "a problem potentially for the whole process of collective bargaining."

Collective bargaining is not a substitute for empowering workers to exercise their legal rights. A trade union should be the last organisation to try and dilute the rights of it members, but this in effect is what has been happening if low paid workers are being asked to take deals that do not take into account back pay. The job of a trade union is to maximise the return for its members, particularly when there is a clear and strong likelihood of success. Collective bargaining fails if one group of workers is continually losing out.

The most odious element in all of this are veiled threats that there will have to be cuts in services if the equal pay awards are met in full. When all else fails, it seems to be fair game to try and emotionally blackmail workers who are at the sharp end of service delivery, with the notion that in the end their service users and clients may suffer if they got to court.

What is particular galling in this saga is public sector employers and unions have seen it coming for a long time. There were plenty of opportunities to plan effectively to ensure that the claims could be met fully and appropriate transitions could be put in place. It truly is a staggering failure that less than half of local authorities have completed equal pay reviews, which demonstrates the lack of priority this issue has been given. The stubborn inertia of employers and unions at a local level failing to grapple with the issue is why it is like it is.

The trade unions involved in these cases need to take a long hard look at themselves and ask how they are going to ensure an equal level of support, representation and respect that low-paid, women workers have a basic right to expect.