Former and current female employees of Glasgow City Council are pushing for pensions to be included as part of an equal pay settlement, as parties opt for negotiation over litigation.
The council is trying to resolve pay issues through negotiation, rather than in court, after the Court of Session decided last year that a regrading scheme – which was introduced in 2007 – might have provided less favourable treatment for female employees.
It’s absolutely essential that those payments are made pensionable
Stefan Cross QC, Action 4 Equality Scotland
In February this year, women marched in Glasgow as part of the equal pay campaign.
Having won the legal case, “they are now demanding a fair and transparent pay and grading scheme and full compensation for the pay they have been denied”, stated an update last month from Unison, one of the unions involved in the campaign.
Thousands of current and former female employees are now pushing for pensions to form part of the settlement.
Action 4 Equality Scotland’s Stefan Cross QC, the lawyer representing around 7,500 of nearly 12,000 women pursuing claims, said claiming for back pay entitlement goes all the way to 2007, so “it’s absolutely essential that those payments are made pensionable”.
He commented that “people seem to forget that the women’s losses… extend way beyond their working life and into their retirement”, and their retirement losses can be greater than the amount they lost during their working lives.
“Assuming that a woman’s going to have an average of 25 years’ retirement, these things are incredibly important,” Cross said.
Counting the pensions cost
The cost to the council for compensating female employees for being paid less than their male counterparts has been roughly estimated by some at around £500m. This could add up to a lot more if pensions are included as part of the equal pay settlement.
Cross noted that the next stage is looking at the scope of that entitlement in terms of the elements of pay and how they are calculated.
He added that they are currently subject to negotiation, and if the negotiation process is unsuccessful, “then that will have to go back to tribunal”.
Cross said the negotiations between the council, unions GMB and Unison, and lawyers “are taking a considerable amount of time”, adding that “the ball’s in the council’s court as to how it’s going to deal with these issues”.
However, he said that at the moment, he is not optimistic they are going to be able to reach an agreement.
A council spokesperson said: “Negotiations are ongoing and that forum is the right place for these kinds of discussions.”
In terms of figures, the council does not yet know what the negotiated settlement will look like.
Negotiation a "sensible" move
Faith Dickson, partner at law firm Sackers, said that pushing for pensions to form part of the equal pay settlement makes sense, adding: “Pensions are part of pay in equal pay purposes, that’s clear in the law.”
To the extent that pensions are part of their pay package, “the women should have been receiving equal accrual of pensions essentially over the period in the same way they should have been receiving equal pay”, Dickson said.
“It’s sensible and probably more cost-effective if they can negotiate a settlement,” said Dickson. She noted that litigation is expensive, so if you can agree to an outcome without litigating, it is worth doing so.
All parties have agreed that the negotiation process could take a long time.
Govt defeated on 'discriminatory' changes for firefighters and judges
The Employment Appeal Tribunal is returning the firefighters’ discrimination case to the Employment Tribunal and has dismissed the government’s appeal over a similar case in relation to a group of judges.
But Dickson pointed out that if they reach an agreement on a negotiated basis, “they might get it through quicker than if they wait to go through the tribunal process”.
When public sector pension schemes moved to the career average revalued earnings structure, there were concerns about whether the move would be discriminatory to women because “they were historically lower paid and so they wouldn’t be building up pension each year that they should have been strictly building up”, Dickson said.
Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, it could pave the way for payment demands in comparable cases.
Dickson said that if precedents are set in terms of how Care schemes are dealt with in this sort of scenario, “it will be jumped on by others in similar situations”.
