Victory for female council workers

By Louise Nousratpour
Wednesday April 28, 2010
The Morning Star

Thousands of women council workers are celebrating after they won an equal pay case which could lead to payouts worth millions of pounds.

An employment tribunal in Birmingham found in favour of more than 4,000 low-paid female workers employed by the Tory-controlled authority, including cleaners and care assistants.

The women, mainly represented by the Unison and GMB unions, successfully appealed against the council's decision to exclude them from bonuses paid to men worth up to 160 per cent of their basic pay.

During the course of the seven-week-long tribunal, the council had defended the bonuses as a genuine reward for productivity.

But on Tuesday, the tribunal judge comprehensively rejected the justifications as "a fig leaf" to conceal a desire to pay male workers "significantly more" than their female counterpart.

In a 160-page judgement, he concluded that Birmingham council "acted unreasonably" in resisting the claims.

The tribunal will now go on to assess the level of compensation to the women, which union lawyers estimated to be worth around £30 million.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis called on the council to pay up.

He said: "This has cost council taxpayers huge amounts of money in legal fees.

"This money would have been better spent on providing vital local services, many of which are facing damaging cuts."

GMB national officer Brian Strutton said the council had "known for years that it owes equal pay to their low-paid women workers but instead of paying up it's tried every trick in the lawyers' book to try to delay.

"But we've persevered and we've won."

Tuesday's major test case against Birmingham City Council is just the tip of the iceberg as 80,000 more equal pay claims are still outstanding.

Union officials said that 80 per cent of councils across Britain had already paid up, with 20 per cent still dragging their feet.

Mr Strutton said that Tory-controlled councils were the worst offenders as they "employ very expensive legal firms to delay their day of reckoning in the hope that the women workers give up or unions run out of money."

A Unison spokeswoman stressed that Birmingham council's behaviour was a "real case in point." She said: "Some women have died waiting for their claims to go through.

"Equal pay is not an option. It's a legal requirement and the sooner employers realise this the better."

Mr Strutton condemned some councils for using loopholes in the Equal Pay Act to slash men's pay to comply with the law rather than improve women's lot.

"GMB has fought massive battles over this, with the most high-profile one being the 13 week-long strike by Leeds City Council refuse collectors."

He identified "two fundamental weaknesses" in the law which he said must be addressed.

"Firstly, it says 'equal' when it should be saying 'equal up' to stop employers dumbing down pay. Secondly, the law is incredibly complicated and must be clarified and simplified," he argued.