THE leader of Glasgow City Council has said she "can't understand" why unions are calling for strike action over equal pay.

Susan Aitken said negotiations were moving ahead and all 'new' pay claims - those from 2018 to 2021 - should be settled in months.

While the majority of equal pay claims against the council were settled in 2018 at a cost of £500 million, up to 5000 more are still to be dealt with.

These additional claims are predicted to cost around £30 million to resolve.

Ms Aitken spoke to the Glasgow Times as councillors prepare to today vote on a decision to give authority to senior officials to conclude equal pay agreements.

Unison and GMB Scotland said last week that council workers could walk out as early as this month.

They claim the council has "failed" to resolve outstanding equal pay settlements or replace its discriminatory pay and grading system, which disproportionately affects women.

In what is an important next step in the settlement process, a paper will go before committee today asking for powers to go to the Chief Executive and the Executive Director of Finance "to conclude all legal and financial agreements associated with the terms of this report".

It also asks for councillors to "approve appropriate extension of the settlement terms agreed in 2019 to allow further claims to be settled up to March 31, 2018."

As well as paying back pay and compensation for underpaid staff, the council is also in the process of renegotiating terms and conditions to make pay fair.

It had been hoped this work would be concluded but it was paused due to the pandemic at the agreement of, Ms Aitken says, the workers' representatives in Unison, Unite, the GMB and legal firm Action4Equality Scotland.

Ms Aitken said: "There have been points of disagreement but we have worked through those and the council has come to a position, having moved quite a bit, that we want to get this money out to the women as soon as possible.

"We've got to account for ourselves to Audit Scotland and we've got to make sure it's fair to the city as well and that there have been some claims emerge that are weaker than others, but for the vast majority, it is a fair cop.

"So it does have to be a negotiation, it can't be taken off the shelf, we have to be clear what we are signing up to because there is a cost to the city.

"The council is ready to make an offer but the paper today gives officers the delegated powers to do that.

Glasgow Times:

"We're about to go into the pre-election period and that is harder to do in that time so it's important this is done."

Speaking to the Glasgow Times on Monday, new Unison Scotland Secretary Tracey Dalling said strike action over equal pay was a certainty and accused the council of dragging its heels.

But Ms Aitken said: "This has not been about the council dragging its feet in the slightest and, in actual fact, it is not in our interests to drag our feet on any of this because the longer it's delayed, the more it's going to cost.

"So there is no reason for us to delay at all.

"The council has conceded - because I made them - that they discriminated against women, that there is a liability and that liability needs to be paid out and we need to replace the previous pay and grading system.

"The complication now is that if we don't get the pay and grading system in place - and it's likely to be an extra year during 2023 - that means there's a year's delay to women getting those payments."

Ms Aitken said the council is now looking to put an interim payment in place for staff so they do not have to wait until the end of 2023 to receive their settlement payment.

She said that strike action would only cause further delays to the process and said she "genuinely doesn't understand" the purpose of the current threat of strike action.

The council leader added: "Both Unison and the GMB have a history of having created this situation, particularly the GMB, and the reality is that their claimants are represented at a significantly weaker level than the Action4Equality claimants, and that's a matter of record.

"I don't want to be cynical and I am absolutely delighted that Tracey Dalling has taken up her post and Scottish Unison has a woman leader, I think that's a fantastic thing, but I think there's an opportunity for her to do what I did and come in and draw a line under this and say, 'We don't have a moral high ground here,' because they don't.

"If Unison and the GMB's current enthusiasm for equal pay had gone on much earlier in 2008 we wouldn't be in this position now but they were not representing women, they were not bringing equal pay claims until quite a bit later.

"I think a little bit of humility and honesty from the trade unions would be really helpful and it would help them clear the decks because their members know this.

"And I genuinely don't understand why they think it would be a good idea for their members to lose a couple of days pay right now."

Once the claims from the three year 'gap period' are settled, the council will then be able to conclude the new grade and pay structures, which is expected to be concluded next year.