Farewell Brum!

[Ottavio Caruso]

[Fredxx]

The really stupid aspect of this is if they privatised their bin collection service, or their care services the equal pay claim would have never materialised.

The claim was specifically comparing bin collection service, that mainly employs men, with a care service that is predominantly female, where the terms and conditions including pay were somewhat different.

[Ottavio Caruso]

In UK this is called bad management. In Italy we would call this corruption.

[Fredxx]

In the UK we would call this political ideology, where Labour, who controls Birmingham, won't consider privatising some of the services that would have solved this issue at the outset.

[ponyface]

thought labour recently took over from tory council.

[Fredxx]

Suggests that Labour has had overall power since 2012. There was a Tory leader from 2004 to 2012 where there was no overall control.

[Ottavio Caruso]

In Italy councils are allowed to go bust and former leaders are prevented from running for office. Unexpectedly, this was implemented by naughty boy Berlusconi because he thought this would penalize the left wing parties and it did work.

[Fredxx]

Similar in the UK:

[SteveW]

How are they comparable though? Care workers may work unsociable hours and any day of the week, while bin men have to work outdoors whatever the weather. One is social, with some manual handling, while the other is entirely manual handling.

The two should never have compared against each other.

[Jethro_uk]

The original problem went back to the 70s. The current financial woes are because the council "forgot" to ensure the pensions were realigned at the same time.

It's not a new problem. They knew of it at least 13 years ago.

[Fredxx]

It was complicated by the way bonuses were given out, and also bin-men could go home if they finished early. So the treatment between the jobs was different.

But otherwise I entirely agree I don't see how the different work functions were "comparable".

[alan_m]

Speculation:

Could it have been the job title. Rather than bin man and care worker the job title was council worker grade 1 to n? Having lumped all the employees into a common job title or grade then it's a one to one comparison even though the jobs are completely different.

In private industry, throughout my career I had various job titles when working for the same company and doing exactly the same job. It seems to have been a way of giving larger salary rises when there was a shortage of skilled staff without necessarily having to give the same to all staff. BTW this didn't stop the zero pay rises in tougher financial trading times :)

[Andrew]

In France it would be time for a lot of burning barricades on motorways

[Andrew]

For Birmingham read Canadian Health Care System collapsing.

Astonishingly, it is almost illegal for private health care to be offered to Canadian citizens in the same state. Check out the YouTube videos on this issue. All the complaints about 8+ hour waits in A&E, 3.5 year waits for a replacement knee joint, staff burnouts and shortages, etc etc could have been made in the UK apart from the accents.

Hundreds of Canadian nurses commute from Windsor? across the bridge to work in Michigan every day.

[Max Demian]

People only try to make a comparison if one is mainly male and the other mainly female. Otherwise everyone would be paid the same. (And that would never do.)

(Actually where I live we have a bin woman. Very modern.)