NEARLY £100,000 in compensation has been forked out by council bosses to disgruntled staff in the last five years.
Glasgow City Council (GCC) chiefs have spent £93,483 in payouts to settle employment tribunal cases since the start of 2016.
Local authority supremos insist the cash “can only be counted in the thousandths of one percent of the city’s costs”, but questions have been raised by opposition councillors.
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Newlands/Auldburn man Kyle Thornton, the Conservative’s workforce spokesman, said: “The release of these figures will rightly infuriate hard pressed Glasgow taxpayers who are right now seeing services slashed while their tax bills go up.
“To spend nearly £100k fighting your own staff is a clear failure of leadership.
“Tribunals of the scale seen in Glasgow City Council from these figures are scandalous and change is needed.
“Maybe rather than putting in bulk uplift charges or patronising Glaswegians about how to recycle properly, the SNP council should stop expensive fights with its own workforce at the taxpayers expense.”
Figures obtained by a Freedom of Information (FOI) request show £53,000 was paid in 2017 alone, double that of any other year during the time period.
In 2019, the second-highest amount, £24,599.72 was handed out to workers. A total of £7913.66 was spent in 2016 and £6,000 in 2018. As of October last year, £1,970 had been dished out in 2020.
For comparison, neighbouring East Dunbartonshire Council spent £78,000 in the same time period and the five-year Glasgow total amounts to around 0.004% of the city’s 2020/21 budget (£2.6 billion).
A GCC spokesman said: “Clearly, any employment tribunal must be taken seriously and any employer would wish to avoid any adverse findings.
“However, in terms of financial impact, it is important to look at these figures in context – which is that, nationally, more than 100,000 cases are raised every year and the overall number of awards made to claimants is rising.
“Despite those facts, in one year, the total value of awards is less than the national average for a single claim – and the total value across all years can only be counted in the thousandths of one percent of the city’s costs.”
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