The truth about Birmingham's discrimination against 6,000 women
And why £760 million equal pay settlement figure is 'crazy'
Hey, hope you are having a good Wednesday. It’s always been my favourite day of the work week - I recently found out that I squirmed out of my mum on a Wednesday, so that might explain it.
Now I’ve planted that image in your head, I’m sorry not to have dropped by for a couple of weeks, I’ll be making up for it with a vengeance over the next two weeks with a bundle of exclusive content. Today my focus is on unpicking for you the confusion that surrounds Birmingham City Council’s equal pay crisis.
Drawing on multiple conversations, academic insight and Freedom of Information requests I’ll try to cut through to the questions that most affect Brummies.
Before that, thank you for reading my Inside Birmingham newsletter. It’s still relatively new - we are 20 editions in today - and I produce it alongside the day job as a reporter at Birmingham Live and Mail, where my stories are published daily. You can read my work for free over there - here’s a link to my archive. I’d highly recommend downloading the BirminghamLive app on your phone or tablet for the best reader experience.
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Birmingham’s Equal Pay Crisis - what you need to know
A key fact has been largely lost in the recent analysis over Birmingham’s equal pay burden. This whole fiasco is not really about a number or £ on a page. It’s about the mistreatment of 6,000 people, nearly all women, who have been let down by their employer.
Most are currently working for the council; some have left. They have each brought gender discrimination claims against the council, claiming they have been treated unequally compared to male counterparts working in male-dominated council services. Around 4,000 of them are members of the GMB union, and around 2,000 are members of Unison.
They are women like teaching assistant Cass Roberts, from Kings Heath Primary School. "It's absolutely not fair that men who are on the same pay grade as us are getting paid more. It's an absolute injustice, disgusting. The council should have sorted it out a long time ago - they've delayed it constantly. They've admitted they are wrong and they know they need to pay out. I don't know why they're delaying it even more. The amount is adding up and we're getting more upset.”
GMB organiser Alice Reynolds described the case as being about ‘stolen wages’. “These women won't be forced to pay for a crisis they didn't create and they're not willing to accept more broken promises.”
Together they are claiming they were paid less (and in some cases were excluded from bonus and overtime options) than counterparts on the same grade and pay in other parts of the council.
It’s blatant sex discrimination if the same employer applies different rules to working practices and pay in male-dominated services than in other, equivalent, largely female dominated occupations.
You can’t, for example, permit a group of binmen to start before their official shift time, claiming an extra ‘allowance’ for unsociable hours while doing so, then crack through their work and knock off three hours early while paying them for a seven hour shift. Not unless you offer the same ‘task and finish’ regime to women on the same pay grade elsewhere in the council - those working in a school, say, or providing care to kids and the elderly, or based in an office.
You also can’t ‘artificially’ create a new, allegedly more skilled post on a higher grade in order to reward staff for long service when the job they actually end up doing is the same as their lower grade colleagues. Unless, as I say, you apply the same rule elsewhere.
The case against the city council is that it has likely done these things, among others, and that’s triggered a new wave of claims. Historically, the council paid out £1.1 billion in equal pay after a historic court ruling in 2012. Since then efforts have been made to finally shut down equal pay. At one point in 2021 it looked like it had succeeded, with an agreed settlement on the table for aggrieved workers. But new revelations emerged that threw that into disarray.
Q1) Is the council’s estimated equal pay liability of £760 million accurate - and if not, what is the likely figure?
Dr James Brackley’s recent report for Sheffield University’s Audit Reform Lab has been reported across the country this week, including by me. He analysed how Birmingham’s equal pay liability has been presented as the driving reason behind the decision to declare de facto bankruptcy, the intervention of commissioners, and the swingeing budget cuts and asset sales plan now facing the city.
You can read his full report here
And you can also catch my article summarising its findings: New rescue plan plea for broke Birmingham as report claims 'errors' over equal pay and bankruptcy
The ‘estimate’ was first presented to a shocked city on June 28th last year, when seemingly out of nowhere council CEO Deborah Cadman announced the council was on the hook for an equal pay liability in the region of £650m to £760m.
In a press release and email to staff, Cadman described the situation as ‘one of the biggest challenges this council has ever faced.’ She said it meant there would be ‘significantly fewer resources available in the future compared to previous years’. (Incidentally, you can read about an extraordinary exchange earlier this year involving Cadman and Cllr Fred Grindrod over this announcement.)
Cllr John Cotton, who had recently been promoted to council leader in a Labour Party internal coup, made a virtue of the announcement. It was a sign of the openness and transparency that would prevail under his leadership, he said.
It was an astonishing revelation in truth from a council in the throes of live litigation. Confirmation of the gravity of the situation amounted to an all-but admission of liability. One lawyer I’ve spoken to, unconnected to the case, said it was tantamount to telling the other side: ‘Come do your worst, we’re getting this big pot of cash ready to hand over to you.’
Another said the sums ‘didn’t add up’ - it would equate to a payout of £126k per claimant, which was ‘beyond anyone’s wildest dreams’ and ‘ludicrous’.
I have tried for months to find out how the council came up with the figures. Direct questions have been rebuffed, so I turned to the Freedom of Information Act. In a response, the council told me the ‘formula’ used exists, but sharing it in public would jeopardise its commercial interests and the legal action under way.
Earlier this year lead commissioner Max Caller poured scorn on attempts by councillors to ask for a rethink of the mysterious figure, describing it as ‘not a real number’. He said it was an 'accounting procedure' and it would be a waste of officers’ time to come up with a different amount that was also ‘not real’.
He later told one senior councillor that he expected the final bill could be as low as £200 million. So why, why, why, are we still talking up £760m?
Q2) If it turns out it is not accurate, and instead the liability is much lower, will at-risk services be saved?
On face value, the answer is no. The current budget cuts under consultation or already agreed affect every service in the city from bins to parks, libraries to the arts, road maintenance to schools. They are based on a deficit between income and outgoings at the council. Equal pay is not included in this book balancing exercise.
The council’s apparent failure to make cuts in previous years and sufficiently transform how it operates, having more people in crisis, and higher and more complex needs being seen off the back of a decade of austerity are all critical factors. The council’s failed Oracle IT programme has also been a catastrophe, with additional costs to put it right now estimated to run to £130m.
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