OVER 1,400 low-paid female workers are the latest to secure their share of a multi-million pound settlement after a council reached agreement on historic equal pay claims.
Some of the Fife Council employees will receive backdated pay and compensation going back to 2006 and expected to run into tens of thousands of pounds each.
Workforce representatives said the figures and issues involved were similar to those in North Lanarkshire where at least one worker secured a pay-out in excess of £100,000.
Unison, which represents the workers, said it would be pushing for the payments to be made by Christmas.
The total settlement is expected to run into double-figure millions.
Fife Council said details of the financial agreements involved "will remain confidential" but said it would have an impact on the tens of millions of pounds the authority needs to make in cuts and savings in the next few years.
Leader of the Labour-led authority David Ross said: “There will be significant cost to the council and we’re in the process of working through the fine detail which will lead to the final figures.
"Set against the existing budget gap of £77 million over three years, this will make the development of our future budgets even more challenging.”
It comes weeks after legal teams representing hundreds of other women who decided not to fight for their equal pay claims via their trade unions secured their own victory.
Action 4 Equality, which has taken on the cases of thousands of female local government workers, said it expected settlement offers from Fife Council to be issued in the coming weeks.
Dougie Black, Unison's regional organiser for Fife local government, said: "This has been a long time coming. Many claims stretch back to 2006.
"We will now discuss individual claims with the employer to ensure each claim is calculated properly. This a good day for low paid women workers and Unison is proud to have been a part of it."
Suzanne Craig, Unison’s legal officer, added: "Unison will be seeking early payment from the employers. Regrettably it took the threat of proceeding to an Employment Tribunal to focus the employer’s minds to settle, but it is great news for everyone that we have agreed.
"Members will receive individual letters, in due course, outlining their settlement figures."
The equal pay saga in Scottish local government stretches back a decade and followed the implementation the Single Status Agreement by local government, unions and employers in 1999.
Aimed at harmonising the pay and conditions of different groups of local government employees, it threw up huge disparities in what male and female workers were being paid for similarly graded work.
So far there have been two waves of claims, with most authorities settling out of court but after long and protracted processes.
In the past five years alone the figure is running to around £300m.
Mr Ross added: "This has been a difficult time for everyone concerned. These claims have been ongoing for some considerable time and the legal processes involved have been complex.
"The fact that we have reached agreement without the need for legal proceedings has to be welcomed."
The GMB union, which faces being sued by its own members after they missed out on years of back pay in a long-running equal pay battle in Lanarkshire, changed its legal team for the Fife cases.
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