Sheffield City Council leader Tom Hunt speaks to Local Democracy Reporter Julia Armstrong about a £36m deal agreed with trade unions on equal pay redress for 3,600 staff who have been losing out on wages
00:00Hi, this is Tom Hunt, Leader of Sheffield Council.
00:04Tom, I just wanted you to talk to me about this equal pay deal you've come to today with the trade unions.
00:11How has that come about?
00:12So today we're sharing the details of a landmark agreement between the City Council and our trade union partners,
00:21the GMB, Unison and Unite, where we're setting out details of how the council will be making redress payments,
00:30to staff at the City Council who are eligible for historic equal pay redress payments.
00:38We were made aware a couple of years ago by the GMB trade union of concerns that some staff at the council may not have been paid fairly over previous years.
00:50As soon as we were made aware of that, we started work jointly in partnership with the trade unions
00:56to review every role in the City Council, to understand where there may be historic equal pay issues.
01:05And today we're sharing details with our staff about who may be eligible for those payments.
01:12This is about making sure that we're treating all of our staff fairly.
01:16And what's your message to those staff today? There are a lot of them, thousands who work for the council.
01:21Our message is that day in, day out, week in, week out, our staff do incredibly hard work, important work to provide public services for the people of this city.
01:34And as a City Council, working with unions, we've got a shared commitment to ensure that all of our staff are treated fairly
01:41and make sure that they receive the pay that they should be.
01:45So as a result, we will be making redress payments, but we'll also now be implementing a new job evaluation scheme.
01:53We'll be looking at every role in the City Council to ensure that going forward, people will be paid fairly for the work that they do.
02:02So this is a big step forward and it is a recognition of our commitment to do the right thing by our staff.
02:07We work incredibly hard and we are now moving forward with unions to ensure that everybody here is treated fairly and paid fairly.
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