Workers have gathered in Easterhouse to demand that Glasgow City Council honour its commitments to equal pay justice.
Workers will ballot over strike action on Monday.
Despite pledging to make this a priority in their 2017 election manifesto, the SNP-controlled council has delayed the pay grading review until at least 2024; has reneged on interim payments for the years since 2018, and is trying to exclude thousands of workers from equal pay entitlements.
Over 14,000 workers – overwhelmingly women – face outrageous robbery of their wages as Glasgow City Council refuses to implement equal pay commitments, and to compensate those who have faced decades of pay inequality.
SSP Workplace Organiser Richie Venton told reporters:
“We are in full solidarity with the fight for equal pay from Glasgow City Council.
“It’s really encouraging how the number of women, in particular, are out fighting for their rights, because for decades they’ve been deprived of the wages that they’re entitled to.
“They’ve been robbed of wages.
“Some of them have actually died before they’ve got their entitlements.
“It’s a disgrace that after years of being denied that by a Labour council, now the SNP council – which was elected with a big promise of dealing with this issue in 2017 – is dragging their feet, and saying they won’t be paid until at least 2024.
“Also, divide-and-rule tactics – depriving some of those who used to qualify from getting interim payments on the question of equal pay.
“It’s absolutely scandalous that, in 2022, women and men are going to have to go on strike to get what they are entitled to. Equal pay should be a human right, and we’ll stand by that.
“Just in the same fashion as the likes of Nurses were emotionally blackmailed into accepting shoddy conditions on the grounds that they wouldn’t dare to strike to pursue their entitlements, the same has been done to care staff.
“Because care staff, as the word suggests, are very caring people. That should not be taken advantage of, and I think that the Council is doing precisely that.”
The Scottish Socialist Party – and all SSP candidates standing in the May elections – have pledged to give 100% support to all affected workers.