GLASGOW’S leader is in “dereliction of duty” over equal pay, claims the man who used to do her job.

Former leader of Glasgow City Council Frank McAveety said it is time to set the record straight over the challenges facing the authority and then put “flag waving” to bed.

Mr McAveety was council leader for two years until May 2017 when the SNP’s Susan Aitken took control.

As the city looks to continue negotiations that will resolve equal pay inequality, Mr McAveety claims the former Labour administration is being unfairly lambasted for the challenges now facing Glasgow.

An initial equal pay claim should have been settled in 2006 but a new Workplace Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR) merely continued the inequality between male and female colleagues.

It has been said that the equal pay issue facing Glasgow now is a Labour problem being left for the SNP to solve.

But Mr McAveety believes the finger pointing must end.

The Glasgow Labour party leader said: “All parties agreed in 2006 that the council was going to try to deal with historic equal pay.

“That included at that time SNP and Lib Dem councillors, so decisions taken then were approved by all the council.

“There was a series of reports that came up during 2006 and 2007 to try to identify progress on that and find ways in which the staff could sign up to the new WPBR.

“The idea it is just a Labour problem when every political party supported the introduction of the WBPR is not right.

“There was never any contrary positions or motions put by the main opposition parties.

“And all of a sudden it becomes “Let’s make this a party political issue.” Well, I don’t think it is a party political issue.

“It’s a justice issue to make sure those women get a settlement that they feel is meaningful because historically they have not felt listened to.”

Ms Aitken, however, came back swinging at the claim. She said: “Let’s not rewrite history. Labour are the architects of this scheme.

"They created it when they absolutely dominated this city, spent a decade defending it and are now trying to disown it. Meanwhile, my administration is fixing it.

“One member of the Labour group said this week he’s been haunted by his decision since 2006.

"At what stage in the subsequent decade did he seek to encourage his colleagues to do something about it?”

Ms Aitken has now said that the bill for payments to around 8000 women will run to the hundreds of millions, a figure previously suggested but not confirmed by council bosses.

The SNP leader also said that, following discussions with Scottish Government Finance Secretary Derek Mackay, the Government would not step in to assist the council in picking up the tab.

But Mr McAveety said he strongly contests that position.

He said: “We need to reach a settlement and I do believe the Scottish Government has a responsibility to help fund that.

“I profoundly disagree with the Leader in that matter.

“It’s a dereliction of duty on the part of the Leader to be so blasé on that matter when actually local and central government have been aware for 30 years of the challenges of dealing with the equal pay act and the whole issue around adopting workplace benefit structures.

“She is wrong in accepting that the Scottish Government can say ‘Well, this is your problem, you deal with it.’”

Mr McAveety added: “When there was a change of Government in 1997, Labour was willing to sit down and take away the problem of housing debt in Scotland and you can see the remarkable change that’s had in Glasgow in every neighbourhood.

“Just because a minister says ‘Nothing to do with me, move along here,’ doesn’t mean it should be accepted.

“I expect more from a Glasgow Leader in terms of challenging their government and I can tell you this, if that had been a Labour Leader not challenging a Labour government, we wouldn’t have been so, ‘Ok, let’s move on, it’s not our problem.’”

Again, Ms Aitken strongly contested the claim and said: "Other Labour Councils solved their pay mess with their own resources, yet Councillor McAveety believes that the people of Paisley, Alloa, Dundee or Orkney should foot the bill for the collective failures of his party over the past decade - I believe that his position is grossly unfair.”

Mr McAveety’s mother has dementia and, he says, relies on Cordia home carers.

The councillor for the Shettleston ward says the women he speaks to care little for the “blame game” and merely want the issue of equal pay to be settled.

He said: “Any of the staff I speak to, they weren’t wanting to go out on strike but felt they had to because for a long time they felt they weren’t being listened to and that, in their opinion, included their own trade unions.

“Any of the carers who have been in seeing my mother will say we just want this solved, we’re not interested in the blame game.

“So why were we in a situation last week where 8000 staff took action? It’s because that 8000 staff didn’t believe the negotiations were being treated in any serious fashion by the council.”

Mr McAveety agrees that the women were also failed by a Labour council that also did not listen to them.

He said: “We got in wrong in terms of, at the time, councillors were being told by senior council officers that we had to let the legal case play out.

“We listened to what we were told and we’ve all got lessons to learn from that.”

A Court of Session ruling in May this year ruled in favour of the claims make by the equal pay campaigners and said evidence given at employment tribunals by the council was no longer credible.

Glasgow City Council, under Ms Aitken, then proceeded to an appeal but lost.

Ms McAveety added: “Our position is quite clear.

“When the Court of Session ruled back in May, we believe that was a change in the whole set of circumstances and we want people to know we recognise that and we now know we got it wrong based on the information we had been given.”

Ms Aitken was also criticised for suggesting that the striking women were unclear of the reasons for the strike.

Mr McAveety said: “I wouldn’t have said that the women don’t know why they are striking. I think the council leader was wrong to say that they don’t really understand why they’re out on strike.

“Any of the carers I’m dealing with they’re pretty clear. They want a solution to this and they want their payments as quickly as possible.”

As negotiations begin again, Mr McAveety said his Labour group is keen to support progress and move away from adversarial party politics.

He added: “Instead of having the flag waving about who’s to blame, let’s find a solution. That’s the position the Labour party wants to take.

“We need to concentrate on putting in place procedures that are robust enough so that we’re not back here in another 10 years time.”