North Lanarkshire Update (1)

I've had some further feedback from last week's tribunal hearing involving North Lanarkshire Council (NLC) - the so-called 2nd wave cases known as Loudon and Others v NLC.

Now the Home Carers who attended the hearing are hopping mad at the evidence given by the council which they perceived as a blatant and very unworthy attempt to talk down the demands of their jobs, in a desperate effort to try and justify the difference in treatment between male and female workers.

But if you ask me the tribunal will see through this evidence because the Council has already been forced to admit that thousands of female dominated jobs, including the Home Carers, have been incorrectly assessed under the Council's job evaluation scheme (JES), so it follows that these grades are wrong.

In addition the tribunal has been told that the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) carried out by an independent consultant did not endorse the Council's JES because the EIA failed to consider a detailed 'rank order of jobs' and the way in which male and female jobs were assimilated to the new pay arrangements back in 2006.

In other words, the EIA failed to consider the 'before' and 'after' effect of the JES and the new pay arrangements to establish whether the female groups were treated less favourably than their male colleagues.

I am pursuing this issue separately with the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC), as regular readers know.   

The Loudon and Others case has now been continued into the New Year and will resume on 19 January 2015 when I understand that the Council's head of human resources, Iris Wylie, will be required to give evidence.

Now that's really great news because iris Wylie has an awful lot of explaining to do if you ask me, so if you are free in January, I would making a point of getting along to the tribunal that week to hear what Iris has to say.

Should be very interesting.

North Lanarkshire Dates (28 October 2014)

The outstanding equal pay cases from North Lanarkshire Council are all scheduled to return to the Glasgow Employment Tribunal on the following dates:

2nd Wave Cases (Loudon and Others v NLC) 

Monday 27th October - Friday 31st October 


Equal Value Cases (Claims from former APT&C staff) 

3rd and 4th November 2014

The tribunal normally gets underway at 10 am - and breaks for lunch around 1pm.

The venue is the Glasgow Employment Tribunal, Eagle Building, 215 Bothwell Street, Glasgow, G2 7TS - a 10 minute walk from Central Station.

Action 4 Equality Scotland claimants from North Lanarkshire are entitled to attend the hearing which is open to the general public as well.

If people do attend, be sure yourself known to Daphne Romney QC and Carol Fox who will be there on behalf of the Action 4 Equality Scotland clients.