Pay row fury boiling over

Oct 12 2006 By Chris Morley, Birmingham Mail

THE first steps to a devastating strike by thousands of Birmingham council workers could be taken next week as the equal pay row threatened to rip the authority apart.

A series of mass meetings will be held by union chiefs each day in different parts of the city to gauge the level of anger among the 49,000-strong workforce.

Feelings are running high over disclosures that many lucrative bonuses paid to staff may have to go to help pay for an estimated £200 million bill to put right historical pay differences between men and women working for the authority.

But union bosses claim the council has jettisoned the original method of evaluating each individual's job as part of the equal pay audit in favour of a much simpler "desktop" version.

The GMB union warned that the system was "fundamentally flawed" and could lead to inaccurate checks which cheat women out of their proper entitlement or unjust wage cuts.

Organiser Roger Jenkins said the city council had not ruled out imposing the changes without union agreement by issuing workers with new contracts and giving 30 days notice of the changes.

He believed some senior staff could lose as much as £15,000 a year as a result.

Since council human resources supremo Coun Alan Rudge sent out a letter three weeks ago to all employees about the situation, he said the GMB phones had been "in meltdown".

Mr Jenkins claimed the cuts to bonuses were being considered "to pay for mistakes this authority have made by underpaying women for years".

He said all but one of the mass meetings would be attended by the GMB's leading expert Lynn Britain and were open to all council employees to hear what options are open to them.

These included accepting the city's decision, withdrawing from the single status equal pay process or refusing to take part in the evaluations but continuing to negotiate.

But Mr Jenkins added that if the third option was chosen and council bosses went ahead without agreement "we will have no option but to ballot for action".

The GMB mass meetings will be held from 6.30pm. On Monday at Yardley J&I School, Tuesday at Queensbridge School, Moseley, Wednesday at Sutton Girls School, Thursday at Summerfield Centre, Dudley Road and Friday at Harborne Primary.

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