Trappist Monk with Tonsillitis

I had a good laugh at this news report from The Independent about the 'next' Labour Government pulling out all the stops on equal pay.

Now this presumably is the same Labour Party which had a overall majority of Westminster MPs in the House of Commons between 1997-2010, and the same Scottish Labour Party which had nothing to say about the long fight for equal pay in Labour-led South Lanarkshire Council.

What a load of old cobblers!

Because as regular readers know I had to go all the way to the UK Supreme Court to drag information out of South Lanarkshire Council about the huge pay differences between male and female council workers.

That battle lasted three years and cost the public purse hundreds of thousands of pounds before South Lanarkshire eventually settled its equal pay claims, the final bill being reported in the press at over £70 million and all the while the Scottish Labour Party was as quiet as a Trappist Monk with tonsillitis.  

So if you ask me, the latest pledge to turn bring in new legislation and regard equal pay as 'unfinished business' is completely laughable because Labour hasn't even enforced the current legislation on the statue book which goes back to the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

Exclusive: Equal pay is ‘60 years away,’ claims new research

Labour to promise legislation to ensure that men and women are paid equally

By CHRIS GREEN, OLIVER WRIGHT  - The Independent

Labour is to place a commitment to equalise pay between men and women at the heart of its manifesto for the next election, The Independent has learnt.

The party is understood to view the issue of equal pay as “unfinished business” from the last time it was in power and is keen to capitalise on David Cameron’s “women problem”, with polls showing he does not connect well with female voters.

Today Labour will go on the attack on the subject, publishing figures showing that the pay gap between the sexes began to widen again in 2013, reversing years of progress. The gap has closed by an average of just 0.31 per cent a year under the Coalition, the figures show – slower than when Labour was in power, when it closed by an average of 0.55 per cent annually.

The figures, based on an analysis by the House of Commons Library, show that in 1997 the pay gap between men and women was 27.5 per cent. Over the intervening years it has narrowed steadily – but in 2013 it rose for the first time, from 19.6 per cent to 19.7 per cent.

Labour believes that the Conservatives are weak on the issue of equal pay and are keen to make it a dividing line between the parties. A senior party source said: “It’s very likely to be something that we will address in the manifesto.”

The gender pay gap currently stands at 19.7 per cent, with women earning only 80p for every £1 earned by men. At the current rate of progress, Labour says, it would take women more than 60 years to achieve financial equality with men – more than a century since the promise of equal pay was first made in Labour’s Equal Pay Act of 1970.

A senior Labour figure said equal pay was viewed within the party as “unfinished business”. They said: “There are certain areas which most people recognise we should’ve addressed in Government. We made huge strides on gay rights, but equal pay was one of the things that got neglected. We mustn’t let the opportunity go to waste again.”

Britain’s gender pay gap remains high due to huge pay discrepancies between men and women in senior roles. A much larger proportion of women are also in part-time positions, which are subject to lower pay and poorer career prospects.

Last month, the Liberal Democrats announced that they would be including a commitment in their manifesto to require all businesses with more than 250 employees to measure and publish information on their gender pay gaps, in an attempt to shame large firms into action.

The policy was included in the Equality Act 2010, which was passed by the Labour government just before the last general election, but the section referring to it was later shelved by the Coalition. Labour is expected to resurrect the policy in its manifesto for 2015.

Equal pay campaigners said the figures should act as a “wake-up call” for the Government. Daisy Sands, head of policy and campaigns at the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for women’s equality and rights, said: “The gap in pay between women and men is a key measure of economic inequality between the sexes. News that the gap has begun to widen, after years of slow but steady progress, is a damning indictment of the Government’s record when it comes to women’s standing in the economy. Women’s position in the labour market and their wider financial security are at grave risk.”

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “It is a scandal that four decades after the Equal Pay Act, women still earn on average £5,000 a year less than men. This pay gap can add up to hundreds of thousands of pounds over the course of a woman’s working life. We need to see a much tougher approach in the next parliament so that future generations of women don’t suffer the same penalties.

“All companies should be properly transparent about how they pay staff. Compulsory pay audits would give employers the information they need to take closing the pay gap seriously.”

Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, said: “We are pleased that the overall trend on the gender pay gap continues downwards. The gap for full-time workers under 40 is now almost zero and it continues to narrow for the over 40s. However, I am clear that it remains too high and I'm committed to reducing it more.

“That’s why the steps we’ve taken have gone far further than the last Government – by giving employees the right to request flexible working as well as introducing Tax Free Childcare and shared parental leave from 2015 so that women can make the right choice for them about how to balance work and families.”

Certain Uncertainties (8 August 2014)

One of the drawbacks of democracy is that idiotic people get to vote.

I say that not as a complaint, but as an observation and although it can be frustrating at times I am still a firm believer in the universal franchise as a means of resolving thorny issues, problems and disputes.

Unlike the ancient Greeks, of course, whose view of democracy was that only an 'intellectual aristocracy' ought to be allowed the vote and take part in their big public debates.

But in Scotland, as elsewhere, the common people have fought for hundreds of years to introduce the notion of 'one person one vote' and we in common with many other modern  democracies have even gone as far as insisting that individual rights must be protected as well in certain circumstances.

In other words, the proposition is that even democracy has limits and that the views of a majority cannot be used to tyrannise and oppress a minority, even a small minority, in the name of religion, for example.

All of which is great if you ask me, though it doesn't mean I don't get frustrated when idiotic people say idiotic things when it comes to discussing the big issues of the day - in the press, on TV and radio programmes, at public meetings, in private meetings, in union meetings, on web sites and blog sites.      

For example, one of the comments that you hear frequently in the current debate on Scottish independence is a demand for 'certainty' - and for supporters on both sides of the Yes/No argument to explain what will happen 'if'. 

Which is completely ridiculous, of course, because we live in an uncertain world and while we debate Scotland's future in Europe (or not as the case may be), there's another big row underway at Westminster which may lead to the UK pulling out of Europe altogether after the 2015 general election.

So the demand for certainty is not in anyone's gift whether they belong to the vote 'Yes' or vote 'No' campaigns.   

And just to prove that life is full of uncertainties, back in 1999 when I was Unison's Head of Local Government and chief negotiator in Scotland ,I was as sure as I could be about anything that the Scottish council employers and the trade unions were right behind the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement in Scotland - which was intended to end years of pay discrimination against 100,000 plus low paid workers.

One the reasons I was confident about the impact of this 'landmark agreement' was that the the employers and the trade unions were all agreed that women's jobs had been underpaid and undervalued for many years - the largest councils and the trade unions were of the same, pro-Labour political outlook.

What could possibly go wrong?  

Yet it did and I've yet I've still to meet anyone from the Scottish employers or the trade unions who can explain why equal pay was 'dead in the water' until Action 4 Equality Scotland arrived on the scene in 2005 - and to this day we're still fighting for equal pay, of course.

Nor can I find anyone who can explain why the Scottish employers and trade unions stood back and allowed a teachers pay agreement costing £800 million a year to leapfrog and take precedence over a pay agreement affecting the lowest paid council workers which would have cost a lot less than £500 million a year.

Now if that's represents progressive politics, socialism or wealth redistribution in modern Scotland - then I promise to hop all the way, on one leg, from Glasgow to John O'Groats.