Glasgow City Council's £548m Equal Pay Settlement (2019) — Compensating Female-Dominated Care, Catering and Cleaning Jobs

In October 2018 roughly 8,000 GMB and Unison members struck in Glasgow over a pay system that campaigners said left staff in female-dominated roles such as catering and cleaning earning up to £3 an hour less than those in male-dominated roles such as refuse collection.
An agreement in principle with Unison, Unite, GMB and Action4Equality Scotland was reached in January 2019 and ratified by the City Administration Committee on 7 February 2019. Press reports put the number of claims at about 16,000 and typical payouts at roughly £34,000–£35,000, though the figures vary by source.
The council financed the settlement by securing loans against property assets, including refinancing an existing City Property Glasgow loan and a sale-and-leaseback of operational buildings, at an estimated cost of about £25m a year for many years.
Evidence caveat: the settlement is a remedy for past pay discrimination, so its value as a prevention model rests on the later pay-structure reform, which this entry does not document. Fiscal cost and the long delay between claims and payment are material lessons: proactive job evaluation is far cheaper than retrospective compensation.

Read the full analysis: https://www.scottishfinancialnews.com/articles/glasgow-city-council-to-remortgage-assets-to-make-548m-equal-pay-settlement