STRIKES are looming in Scotland after council workers voted to reject the latest pay offer from their employers yesterday.
Thousands of employees, represented by Unison Scotland – including bin workers and nursery workers – voted by 86 per cent to reject the pay offer, which the union said “falls short of expectations.”
The offer includes an hourly uplift of 67p or a 3.6 per cent increase, whichever is higher.
Cosla (the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) described the deal as “fair.”
But Unison highlighted that workers have suffered a 25 per cent real-terms pay cut over the past 14 years.
The union said that council workers are angry that their pay offer is “not in line” with other public service workers – many of whom have been given rises amounting to 5.5 per cent.
Industrial action could be on the horizon, with Unison securing strike mandates for waste workers in 13 councils and education and early years staff in five local authorities.
Unison Scotland local government committee chair Colette Hunter said that council workers “want a fair increase to stop their pay consistently falling behind, and for their wage increase to be in line with other areas of the economy.”
Ms Hunter added: “This result must be a wake-up call and get the employers and government to invest in local services and the staff who deliver them.”
Unison Scotland co-lead for local government David O’Connor said: “Councils are in crisis.
“They struggle to recruit because workers are expected to deliver even more with fewer staff and lower wages.
“That puts workers and the services they provide under intolerable pressure. It can’t go on.”
A Cosla spokesperson said: “We are deeply disappointed Unison have rejected our latest strong, above inflation, pay offer.
“This is the absolute limit of affordability for local government and exhausts all available funding from Scottish government.
“We remain concerned that Unison’s expectations cannot be met without further unpalatable difficult decisions.”
Areas potentially facing bin strikes include Glasgow, Inverclyde, South Lanarkshire, North Lanarkshire, Fife, Midlothian, Stirling, and East Lothian, as well as Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, East Ayrshire, and West Lothian.
Refuse and education strikes may take place in Perth and Kinross.
Education strikes could also take place in Shetland, Orkney, East Renfrewshire and Angus.
