Agreements were reached on pay claims with mainly female workers who have been paid less than men in equivalent roles.
They were funded by a deal which saw 17 buildings, including the city chambers and Kelvingrove Museum, sold to an arms-length body and then leased back.
An external audit report for 2023/24 states the annual rent payable by the council for all 17 sale and leaseback properties is now £32.1m plus annual inflation.
Council leader Susan Aitken said it is the “price of justice, and it is a price worth paying” — but it “creates challenges” for the local authority.
The council still needs to roll out a new pay and grading structure to end pay discrimination. It had hoped to implement the structure by the “latter part of 2024/25” but this was delayed and a new date hasn’t been set.
Auditors recommend the council set a new date to provide “certainty” to staff. It is understood there is an expectation it will be introduced within this financial year (2025/26).
Cllr Aitken said it is “complex and challenging to replace a previous pay and grading system which had sex discrimination baked into it and replace that in now a context where many of the job roles in the council are very different to they were a decade ago or five or six years ago”.
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“I am very confident we can point to our record of addressing the challenge of equal pay since 2017,” she added. “I think it has been exemplary, it has been incredibly difficult.”
The council is handling its equal pay issue “considerably better” than other local authorities in the UK, the council leader added.
Pay claims have been settled up to October 15, 2023 — the effective date for the introduction of the new pay and grading structure — but workers will receive backdated payments for the period between that date and the implementation of the structure.
The council settled over 15,000 claims with staff who had been paid unfairly in 2019, funded by a deal worth over £500m which saw 11 buildings, including the Riverside Museum and Emirates Arena, sold to an arms-length body then leased back.
That deal related to claims submitted before an agreed cut-off date of March 31, 2018. Another agreement, worth over £200m, for other claims, including after the cut off, was reached in November 2022.
The funding strategy involved the further sale and leaseback of six properties, including the city chambers, Kelvingrove Museum and the Gallery of Modern Art.
The audit report stated the council made payments of £257.8m in 2023/24 in respect of equal pay settlements and “in order to prevent future liabilities, the council must implement a revised pay and grading structure”.
Ernst & Young LLP’s report was presented to the city administration committee on Thursday, sparking a row over equal pay.
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Cllr Elaine McDougall, Labour, said: “I just feel that this is the second year on the trot that we have a damning report under this administration. I just feel you have taken your eye off the ball.”
Council leader Susan Aitken said that was “an unfortunate interpretation of an audit report which is addressing issues such as pay and grading, which is a direct consequence of the pay discrimination put in place by previous administrations” and “sustained through the courts”.
Cllr McDougall said the SNP had also “agreed to the legal advice” that the previous Labour administration had received.
Labour’s new deputy leader, Cllr John Carson, said there are “numerous local authorities that are facing issues with equal pay across the UK, including Dundee which was run by the SNP”.
He added they were “dealing with an issue about social injustices faced by women in the workplace”. “It is absolutely right that we solve that, but there has to come a point where this administration stops using the crutch of the women workers’ wages to mask its own decision-making.
“If the council is just run on automatic, please do point that out to us, because you have to take responsibility for something at some stage.”
New Glasgow Labour leader Rashid Hussain asked officials whether there was a planned delivery date for the new pay and grading system.
He was told: “When we are in a position where we are ready to come back to committee with a timetable for how that will be taken forward then we will absolutely do so.”
