Scottish Context

This section is not an exhaustive list of all initiatives and work around equal pay in Scotland, but highlights some key policy and other initiatives.

Cross-directorate working group on occupational segregation

The Scottish Government (then Executive) established a cross-directorate (then departmental) working group on occupational segregation, in part because of the focus of recommendations of the Women and Work Commission report on that specific cause of the pay gap.

Close the Gap participated in this group, which considered the specific locus for action on occupational segregation within each directorate. The group reported in July 2008.

Occupational segregation as a Ministerial priority

The Scottish Government was obliged by the Gender Equality Duty to set Ministerial priorities for action, which were then reported on to the Scottish Parliament. The most recent priorities, identified in 2009, were violence against women and occupational segregation.

These priorities have been levers of focus on occupational segregation, both within individual public sector organisations, and on the part of the Scottish Government itself. With the provisions of the specific public sector duties still unclear, it is not yet known whether a similar type of priority-setting will be done with regard to gender equality.

Single Status, Agenda for Change, and the Framework Agreement

There are several programmes of pay modernisation going forward in Scotland at present.

Within local government the Single Status Agreement is being implemented to move all local government employees to a single pay structure. This has been the most high profile of the pay modernisation programmes, and has received significant levels of media coverage.  The EHRC (and formerly as the EOC), trade unions and CoSLA have called for central government funding of Single Status, but the release of such funding has been robustly resisted by the Scottish Government (and previously as the Scottish Executive).

As a consequence, local authorities are under pressure to fund Single Status through capitalisation or from reserves, or from reducing service levels, or from elsewhere within the pay bill. This has created a number of tensions, and there are concerns about whether the job evaluation schemes at the heart of the programme are genuinely free of sex bias, and whether the implementation of the job evaluation schemes has been fair and transparent.  The EHRC is currently using its investigation powers to explore the pay levels of pupil assistants at Glasgow City Council, which is interrogating the job evaluation scheme that has been implemented in that local authority.

Agenda for Change is the pay modernisation programme which has been implemented within the NHS. It has received significant levels of central funding. While it was ongoing, there was a reluctance within the NHS to engage substantively with the issue of equal pay more broadly, but recent judgments which appear to affirm the Agenda for Change job evaluation scheme have created space for this to happen.

Equal pay in local government and the health service have both been examined by the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Scottish Parliament, as part of its scrutiny of the Scottish Budget, in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

The Framework Agreement is the employment modernisation programme underway within the Higher Education sector. It did not implement a single pay structure, but does have issues pertaining to equal pay within its remit. It has received some level of central funding for the improvement of HR practice within the sector. Unlike Agenda for Change and Single Status, the Framework Agreement implementation process has not experienced significant intervention by no-win-no-fee lawyers.