GLASGOW City Council will pay £500 million to settle its long-running equal pay dispute in a historic agreement.
The SNP-led council has agreed a deal in principal with trade unions and lawyers representing thousands of historically low-paid women.
The women, represented by Action4Equality, Unison, GMB and Unite, will be in line for an average pay-out of £35,000.
Council leader Susan Aitken made agreeing a settlement a priority for her administration, after the previous Labour council had spent years battling the women in the courts.
Aitken said: "Almost exactly a year since the city government led on the hugely significant step of abandoning many years of litigation on equal pay, I am delighted that the council and claimants representatives have agreed an offer which I will recommend to committee for their approval in the coming weeks.
“We were clear that this was always likely to take at least a year and the sheer volume of cases involved and the complexity of the council’s pay and grading arrangements were such that this was never going to be easy.
"My commitment to resolving this issue has never wavered and I have never needed to be convinced of the case for equality.
“I would like to thank each and every council officer who has been involved in this at times extremely challenging process, the claimants’ representatives who have steadfastly represented their members and clients throughout and the claimants themselves for their patience.
“After a decade of obstruction and inaction, in a relatively short space of time we have now reached agreement which delivers the pay justice these women long have fought for.
"I am proud to be able to recommend a settlement to right this historic injustice and I trust colleagues across the Chambers will support this deal and the work we must undertake to address the future challenges it places before us.”
The deal will need to be signed off by the full council in the coming weeks, and approval will be sought from the claimants. Plans to release the funds required will now be put into motion.
Glasgow City Council had received around 14,000 claims. Technical agreements on how and when the money will be paid to claimants must still be finalised, with the first payments expected in the middle of this year at the earliest.
Other than a small group of male staff whose pay grade was used as the standard against which female workers’ salaries were compared, all claimants are in line to receive a payment.
Stefan Cross QC from Action4equality, which acted for the vast majority of claimants, said: “Since the strike there has been real and constructive negotiations.
"Neither side has got everything it wanted and both sides have made serious concessions so that we can both be satisfied that this is a fair deal.
"Once the settlements have been processed both sides are committed to completing the new job evaluation study and devising a fair and lawful remuneration package that fairly and properly remunerates the work done by Glasgow’s wonderful dedicated workforce.
"No further litigation will take place whilst that task is being completed."
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