Council staff claim equal pay

BRITAIN'S BIGGEST union yesterday launched a campaign for equal pay on behalf of up to a million women who work for local authorities. It could cost the Government hundreds of millions of pounds.

Unison, the public service union, warned that while it wanted to close the "massive gulf" in pay by negotiation, it would also resort to court action.

After years of campaigning, employees' representatives said yesterday that women were prepared to be patient, "but they can't wait for ever".

A leading lawyer working for the union calculated that the practice of paying bonuses to employees in male- dominated occupations, but not to those where women were in the majority could cost local authorities up to a billion pounds. The union believes that some authorities could be driven into bankruptcy if they adopted the payment but they argued that the total figure could be kept down through negotiation.

The union has recently backed four cases on behalf of school-meals workers and nursery nurses, which cost local authorities more than pounds 20m in compensation and back pay. There are half a dozen more cases in the pipeline and the union says there will be others unless ministers devote substantial funds to deal with the problem.

Heather Wakefield, Unison national officer, said: "We want the Government to recognise that inequality in pay is a very serious problem. Money needs to be made available to local authorities to rectify the anomaly. We would prefer to negotiate, but the Government and local authorities should be in no doubt that ultimately we will take court action."

Local government is the single biggest employer of women in Britain - of the 1.4 million employees, nearly one million are female. Among the groups involved in the drive for equality are home-care workers, secretaries, typists, clerks, school-meals workers, nursery nurses, cleaning staff and care assistants. The union estimates that women in local authorities earn only 78 per cent of the amount paid to male colleagues.