THE GMB union has urged Glasgow City Council to sell a famous work of art to help pay their outstanding damages in an equal pay dispute.
According to the Daily Record, GMB general secretary Gary Smith has urged the council to sell Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dali to help pay the council’s estimated £500 million debt from its agreed deals with GMB.
After a 2017 Court of Session decision, Glasgow City Council’s pay grade scheme was judged to be unfit for purpose and a subsequent 2019 deal was made with the predominantly female workers to correct the situation.
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According to the Daily Record, Smith said: “The council’s residual equal pay liability is getting bigger by the day and the final bill will probably run into the hundreds of millions once again.
“That’s why the council’s unelected officials have stalled the settlement process, made no clear offer to the claimant groups, and provided no definitive timescale on the replacement of the discriminatory pay and grading system – yet they wonder why 14,000 workers are balloting for strike action?
“Time and again we’ve urged the council leadership to pick up the phone to government and ask for help to ease the pressure on the city’s finances and to help resolve Glasgow’s equal pay crisis, but it’s fallen on deaf ears.
“If the council really thinks it can fix this alone then it had better start making plans to flog the Dali, because there is no way this discrimination is going to be paid for off the back of hard-pressed workers in a cost-of-living crisis.”
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The painting is perhaps Dali’s most famous religious piece of work, bringing in tourists from all over the world to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery where it sits in pride of place.
The painting was initially bought in 1952 for £8200 but is now worth tens of millions of pounds.
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