Can I Have My Money Back?



I was reminded of this post from the blog site archive when I wrote recently about the trade unions barking up the wrong tree in relation to an council strike ballot.

No wonder so many union members are fed up with their leaders when they behave in this cynical way, but there's no doubt in my mind that the unions have taken their members for a ride and treated them like 'useful idiots' in the fight for equal pay.

Can I Have My Money Back? (2 September 2013)

Unison contributions or membership fees operate on a sliding scale based on what people earn - £1.30 a month for a salary of up to £2,000 and a maximum of £22.50 a month for those earning over £35,000 a year.


The 5th point on this scale is £7.85 a month which is paid by members earning £11,001 to £14,000 a year - and that seems like a reasonable figure to use as the contribution Unison members pay on average in your average Unison branch.

So let's apply that figure to Unison in South Lanarkshire and calculate how much the union has collected or earned in contributions from members in places like Hamilton, East Kilbride, Rutherglen and Lanark over the past 14 years. 


Now I'm using 14 years for a good reason - because the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement was signed by Unison and the Scottish council employers - including South Lanarkshire Council - just over 14 years ago.

The South Lanarkshire Unison branch claims to have 6,000 members on its books - so let's say only 5,000 of that number (a conservative figure) are directly employed by South Lanarkshire Council. 


5,000 members x £7.85 x 12 months x 14 years = £6,594,000 (£6.59 million UK pounds) - which is a whole lot of money by any standards, but the serious question I'd like to pose is this:

"Does anyone in their right mind believe that Unison members in South Lanarkshire have received value for money for their £6.59 million - especially in the fight for Equal Pay over the past 14 years?" 


I suspect not and if I were a Unison member in South Lanarkshire Council - I'd be asking for a full refund or in the words of the famous Gerry Rafferty song 'Can I Have My Money Back?'.

     
More Belly Laughs (30 August 2013)



Here are some more 'words of wisdom' from the Stewards Briefing issued by the Unison South Lanarkshire Branch - eight years ago on 25 August 2013.


"Who are these "No Win No Fee" lawyers?" 
"Action 4 Equality are led by a lawyer called Stefan Cross who has made a name for himself, and lots of money, cherry picking cases in the North of England. The "No win no fee" lawyers identify where employers have been slow to address equal pay. They pick a few easy cases where they can demonstrate a woman doing similar work valued work is paid less than a man. If they win at tribunal they cream off up to 30% of the settlement for themselves. Workers going with them are obliged to sign a contract that gives them the right to drop the case whenever they choose, usually when they deem that they can't make enough profit."

Now there are so many things wrong with this ridiculous statement it's difficult to choose where to start, but here are a few obvious points to correct.

South Lanarkshire Council was not 'slow' to deal with equal pay and single status - in fact the Council claims to have been the first in Scotland to apply the 1999 Agreement (in 2004) - so South Lanarkshire has not been targeted for being at the back of the pack.

Instead South Lanarkshire is in a terrible mess because it deliberately ignored advice from COSLA (the employers' body) on job evaluation - having helped to draw up that advice - and instead went its own arrogant way with an in-house job evaluation scheme which has since been declared as 'unfit for purpose' by the Employment Tribunals.

The trade unions at Scottish level gave the same advice to their local branches, but the local union reps in South Lanarkshire seem to have become far too close to the Council - because why else would they fail to heed the advice of their national union leaders?

Readers can draw their own conclusions, but in my experience this is a classic case of trade unions at a local level becoming far to cosy and chummy with the Council - to the detriment of their lowest paid members.
Action 4 Equality Scotland has not picked up a 'few easy cases' which is a laughable thing to say - especially as A4ES has been fighting for equal pay in South Lanarkshire for the past 8 years while the trade unions, including Unison, were doing their level best to discourage members from raising equal pay claims.

A4ES charges a success fee of 10% on clients' settlements and that figure has always been the same - which seems like a great deal to me when you think that all the costs of fighting these cases since 2005 has not cost our clients a single penny.

The trade unions on the other and have been taking their members' union contributions - week in week out since 1999 - yet all the while they have been making a complete dog's dinner of equal pay.

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