North Lanarkshire Update

I promised to say more about North Lanarkshire Council's Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) and the letter from Iris Wylie to Unison setting out the EIA's terms of reference.

Now the purpose of an EIA is very simple - it's a device for ensuring that the way in which a job evaluation scheme (JES) and new pay arrangements are being implemented is both fair and non-discriminatory, i.e. that some groups are not being treated more favourably, or less favourably, than others.

The 'killer' part of the EIA comes in the fifth bullet point which are not numbered, so I reproduce what this part of the letter has to say below, in full:

• identify predominantly male or predominantly female jobs in the existing grading structure and confirm how they move within the new evaluated rank order of jobs i.e. upwards or downwards

What this represents is a commitment from both sides, i.e. the Council and trade unions to check on the 'rank order' of jobs and where they sit in the pay hierarchy -  before and the JES and new pay arrangements are implemented.

As someone who has been involved in JES and pay negotiations for over thirty years, I would say that it's the single most important check anyone can carry out because any problems or 'odd' results stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Yet even though this commitment was set out in black and white within the EIA's terms of reference I have not seen any report, document or letter (from the Council or the unions) making the very obvious point that the traditional male jobs were all retaining their old earnings.

As readers know from previous posts this was done by incorporating the old bonus earnings into new and higher basic salaries, but what this did into the bargain was to maintain the big differences in pay between male and female jobs.

Now that's a question for senior officials in NLC to answer although I'd be very interested to hear what the unions have to say as well.