Male workers win equal pay compensation

Edinburgh City Council has agreed that about 50 of its male manual workers can receive compensation for previous pay inequalities.

Earlier this year, 3,000 of the council’s female cleaners, home-helps and caterers won payouts worth thousands of pounds on average, after successfully claiming that they had been victims of sexual discrimination; for years they had missed out on bonuses paid to similarly graded (and predominantly male) refuse collectors and road repair crews.

But the council refused to make the compensation payments to the women’s male colleagues in exactly the same jobs, arguing that sex discrimination laws do not cover men. Unions immediately threatened to take the men’s case to the European courts, prompting a reversal of the decision last month.

John Stevenson, branch secretary of public services union UNISON, praised the council for applying its equal opportunities policies after previously “trying to wriggle out of its responsibilities by using a legal loophole”.