ALMOST 100 female workers have filed sex discrimination and equal pay claims against the Scottish Prison Service following a decision to award additional payments to prison officers but not to other staff.
The majority of prison officers are men and the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) said that not extending the payments to other female staff like office workers amounted to discrimination.
The PCS said: “Our women members’ jobs have been rated independently as equal, so pay should be equally rewarded.”
Prison officers will receive an extra £1,000 this year and another £1,000 next year on top of annual pay awards.
The payments were sanctioned by senior Scottish government ministers, including Finance Secretary Derek Mackay and Justice Secretary Michael Matheson.
The move will cost the prison service £3.7m in each year. Similar payments were made in 2015 at a cost of £7.4 million and were described as a “one-off” at the time.
The women who are claiming discrimination are non-operational staff working for the prison service in areas including administration, psychological services, HR, payroll, IT and procurement.
PCS national officer for Scotland Lynn Henderson said “These payments have been made despite there being no change in the role of the prison officers.
“It is scandalous that the Scottish Government has knowingly sanctioned discriminatory treatment of hard-working women workers in our prisons.
“It flies in the face of their own Fair Work Principles which include the need for equality.”
A Scottish Prison Service spokeswoman said: “We have received the claim but it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment any further at this time.”
In March this year it was revealed that Scotland’s prison officers were to receive a controversial £2,000 bonus payment over the next 12 months despite the majority of public sector workers looking at one per cent in salary rises.
The Sunday Herald obtained an email from prison chiefs stating the payment was for “significant changes to the role of prison officers” caused by reforms to the service.
At the time, the deal was met with anger and criticism by a union whose members are subject to the Scottish Government’s one per cent cap on those earning more than £22,000, and a maximum increase of £400 for those on lower salaries.
PCS, the UK’s largest civil service trade union, said prison officers deserved a pay increase, but claimed it was wrong that the rest of the public sector workforce had not been made a similar offer.
A £2,000 lump sum was handed to prison officers in 2015 in a similarly controversial deal with the Prison Officers Association (POA) that angered other unions.
Matheson told MSPs in March 2015 that the SPS had decided “the one-off payment for prison officers is made in recognition of a specific set of circumstances unique to their frontline role” but the SPS agreed to pay its prison officers £1,000 in spring 2017 and the same amount next year.
The PCS said ministers needed to explain why prison officers were treated as as an “exceptional” case but other public sector workers were not.
Henderson said: “Time and again public sector workers are told that pay restraint is the cost of saving jobs and that the one per cent pay cap cannot be breached, that it’s simply a burden they have to bear.
“Yet once again Scottish ministers appear to pick and choose which workers are exempt.”
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