Birmingham council underpaid women for decades. Let it sell off the NEC

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/15/birmingham-council-equal-pay-women-nec

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Birmingham city council says it may have to sell the NEC and its other big exhibition centres to meet the costs of compensating thousands of women it has paid unfairly for, well, pretty well for ever. This is the council that has been the hammer of the equal pay claim. It fought every attempt by its women employees to argue that their jobs were worth the same as many of the council's male workers (stand up, Birmingham binmen). Now they are having to count the very painful cost of being in denial for so long. It would be heartwarming to suppose the council could apologise, admit it made a harsh and unfair misjudgment that they (and their council taxpayers) were going to have to pay for. Instead, the line seems to go like this: Would you believe it! First these women demand more money! Now they're making us sell off our crown jewels!

In the council's defence (someone has to be fair) judges couldn't agree whether it was reasonable to allow claims to be made in court rather than in an employment tribunal where there is a six-month time limit. But the council lost at every stage, all the way to the supreme court. Maybe it should have spotted the trend sooner. Or, even better, paid women fairly, earlier. The ruling has led to negotiated settlements with 11,000 workers, many of them care workers and dinner ladies.

Employer takes advantage of low-skilled and poorly organised workforce – not such a novelty. But the historic role of the unions is another wretched twist in the tale. It was, after all, the unions who conspired with employers to get round the equal pay legislation and negotiated bonuses for the men that women weren't entitled to – the source of many of the current equal pay claims. Unions often do a grand job, but they certainly know how to protect the status quo when it's in the interests of their most powerful members. In the past, if that meant treating women unfairly, well, there was only so much the council could afford, wasn't there? It wasn't even the unions who led the challenge to local councils pay policies that has finally been successful, but an ex-union lawyer, Stefan Cross, who became frustrated by his union's lethargic approach to equal pay.

Defenders of the union approach argued that local authorities simply can't afford to meet the cost of fair pay. But you cannot correct one wrong – underfunding of local councils – with another. This should never have happened. The single status agreement and the NHS's agenda for change were supposed to have institutionalised fair pay. The gap is certainly much smaller in local government than in the private sector (about 5% as opposed to 17% of median weekly earnings) but that doesn't mean it doesn't still exist.

The only way of monitoring what's happening is to introduce equal pay audits. They were promised in the 2010 Equalities Act, but they've ended up somewhere way out in the long grass of the Department for Work and Pensions. For now, it takes a freedom of information application, such as that made by the South Lanarkshire care workers, to expose the extent of the pay gap.

Meanwhile, the message to women is reinforced. You are not worth the money, dear. We cannot afford to pay you. Don't let them do this. Birmingham council, you were wrong. You lost. Now deal with it.

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