Council offers up to £100k in equal pay row

Payments of up to £100,000 are being offered to council workers in a longrunning equal pay row.

Settlement letters are being sent to thousands of current and former Glasgow City Council workers after the local authority agreed to pay out at least £500 million earlier this year, more than a decade on from the dispute arising.

Around 16,000 workers, mostly women, brought claims against the council following a Court of Session ruling in 2017 that female employees had been discriminated against.

The council adopted the Workforce Pay and Benefit Review, implementing its job evaluation-based pay and grading system in 2006, with the aim of ensuring men and women received equal pay for jobs of the same value.

But some women claim they were paid £3 an hour less than men in similarly graded roles.

The claimant group, including unions GMB, Unison, Unite and Action 4 Equality, reached a deal with Glasgow council months after thousands of workers went on strike in October.

The GMB union said settlements average around £22,000 while some are up to £100,000.