COUNCIL chiefs are refusing to settle a long-running strike for fear of triggering an equal pay claim, Unison local government conference heard today.

Barnet Unison mental health worker Helen Davies poured scorn on the Labour-run authority as she backed a motion calling on the union to become the most powerful advocate for ending the gender pay gap.

Speaking on their 61st day of strike action over a disparity in retention pay between mental health workers and their colleagues in children’s services, she said the authority had told her mostly female colleagues: “We can’t pay you because we are afraid of an equal pay claim. 

“What rubbish,” she declared.

Ms Davies urged delegates to challenge recruitment firm Imperium Solutions, which the Labour-run council in the north London borough has engaged to provide mental health services during the strike.

And she added that claims workers are to blame for Birmingham City Council declaring effective bankruptcy last year, in part over a £760 million equal pay bill, was “absolute baloney.”

York City delegate Julie Forgan said: “Women are paid less because we are valued less under the current sexist system.”

She said women are expected to act as “shock absorbers, cushioning the impacts of austerity” through unpaid labour and she condemned Labour councils for having accepted years of cuts without resistance.

Ms Forgan warned that Labour’s new election manifesto fails to suggest how the party can meet its pledge of reducing the gender pay gap.

“They have pledged not to tax the rich: so how can equal pay be achieved under a [Sir Keir] Starmer government? The reality is it will have to be fought for,” she said. “The junior doctors are right to be on the picket lines and I think many others will have to join them.”