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Women taking over as council's top earners

Jessica Beckett
23/ 4/2008

FEMALE workers are smashing the glass ceiling at Oldham Council – a year after it was revealed that thousands of the authority’s female staff are underpaid.

A survey has revealed that more than half of the top five per cent of earners at the council are now women.

The study showed that in 2006-2007, 51.3 per cent of council chiefs are women – making Oldham Council second in the North West league and third in the English league for female-dominated positions.

Four out of the nine members of the council’s strategic management team are female.

Kamaljeet Jandu, of trade union GMB which carried out the survey, said: "Women in local government have started to break through the glass ceiling into the top jobs. Given the increasing role of women in the labour market some councils have awoken to the talent, skill and expertise that women bring to the place of work."

But it is a different picture for women in less prominent roles.

Last January – 32 years after the Equal Pay Act came into force – Oldham Council was forced to pay out £7m of compensation to around 1,700 employees. A majority were women, who had been underpaid for as long as nine years.

At the time, a spokesman for Unison said that the union would argue for the maximum award, basically equal to six-times the proven difference between an annual male and female wage in the same job.

The council made out-of-court settlements of up to £8,000 per person, meaning that some female council workers could have been earning almost £1,500 less than men in the same role.

The figures from GMB followed a town hall rich list by the TaxPayers’ Alliance which revealed that 818 local authority employees earn over £100,000 a year.

The rich list was compiled using Freedom of Information requests to each local authority – to which Oldham Council failed to respond.

But last year’s rich list published in March 2007 showed that for the years 2005-2006 all of the council’s executive service directors were earning £100,494 a year. The survey also revealed that in the same period, 2005-2006, chief executive, Andrew Kilburn netted £137,574 per annum.

The figures are in stark contrast to other public sector positions. The starting salary of a police officer is £20,000 a year while a soldier and a nurse will begin on £15,359 and £21,985 respectively.

Robert Cragg, interim assistant director of human resources at Oldham Council, said: "The council is committed to recruitment policies that will find the best person for the job, irrespective of gender.

"Although the council was not able to respond to the TaxPayers’ Alliance 2008 survey in time, it can confirm that there are seven posts with an annual salary of £100,000 or more. These are the chief and deputy chief executives, and five executive directors."