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Over 8,000 council workers in Glasgow, many of them women who have never been on picket lines, are planning to strike for two days next week to protest long-standing pay disparities. The strike will affect homecare, schools, nurseries, cleaning and catering services across the country, which is estimated to be the biggest pay-related strike seen in the United Kingdom. The issue stems from a 2006 decision by the Glasgow council to introduce a job evaluation plan that would address gender pay disparities, but female workers say that it furthered discrimination because despite female-dominated jobs (such as catering and cleaning) being declared of equal value to male-dominated jobs (such as trash pickup), those positions were still paid less due to a complex system that was detrimental to people who worked split shifts and irregular hours. Critics have accused the unions of favoring male workers with labor relations disputes over female workers for decades and of only using the current pay dispute to curry favor with the current Scottish National Party administration.