Category: Workplace issues

LG Pay Update

First set of strike dates confirmed

UNISON have this morning served notice on 8 local authorities of strike dates for waste and recycling members. These dates align with the dates also notified to authorities this morning by the GMB.  It is unfortunate that they do not align with the dates Unite have already notified but that was not for the want of trying to achieve an agreed approach.


Please see press release on link below

Strike dates for waste workers confirmed

Strike dates for schools/early years will be confirmed in due course.

We are holding an online general meeting on Thursday 18th August at 6p.m and all members are required to attend. Please see the following brief agenda below for the meeting. If members able to attend please contact the branch on the following e-mail address thomsonl34s@stirling.gov.uk and a link will be forwarded to you prior to the meeting.

Agenda

  • Pay update
  • Motion to transfer monies to IA account

The UNISON Scotland LG leads will be meeting branches with a strike mandate on Monday to discuss preparation for action.

We are also working on supporting materials/advice to members taking action and resources for those who are not so they can demonstrate their support for those Workers taking action on their behalf. 

Further information on all of that will follow asap – you will appreciate that things are moving at pace at the moment but we will, as always we will communicate any developments as soon as we have more detail.

Council strikes to go ahead after UNISON rejects derisory 3.5% pay offer

UNISON, the largest union in local government, met today to discuss COSLA’s latest 3.5% pay offer. The union unanimously agreed to reject this revised offer outright and voted overwhelmingly to continue with their strike plans in councils across Scotland.

UNISON rejected the offer as it has not sufficiently improved, falls far short of the Joint Trade Union’s claim (submitted in January) and falls far short of the current rate of inflation, which continues to rise.

The union also made the point that the offer falls far short of the offer made to council workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who have been offered a £1925 flat rate uplift, which equates to a 10.5% increase for those on the lowest wages.

Johanna Baxter, UNISON head of local government said: “This is another derisory pay offer. We are in a ridiculous position of both our employers and the Scottish Government agree this 3.5% pay offer is not nearly enough, but both are at loggerheads about who should pay for it.

Meanwhile council workers – over half earn less than £25k per year – are worrying about paying the bills. Inflation is predicted to rise to 13.5% and our members are offered a real-terms pay cut which will plunge more of them into debt.

We have written to COSLA to tell them the strike continues in waste and recycling and we will confirm dates for strike action in schools and early years in the coming days.”

You have been offered another pay cut and not a pay rise

Hi, I am Lorraine Thomson. I am a UNISON member, and I am the Branch Secretary for the UNISON Stirling Branch and the Chair of UNISON Scotland’s Education Issues Group.

Many services are still recovering and feeling the effects from the pandemic, Holyrood continues to underfund councils, and the failure to provide local government workers with an inflation busting pay rise in the midst of a cost of living crisis continues to put a strain on a largely overworked workforce.

In real terms you have been offered another pay cut and not a pay rise.

The services provided by council workers are what makes a decent society possible. They are not a drain on our society, but an achievement of our society.

UNISON members deserve a fair pay rise. Their fuel costs have went up. Their heating costs have went up. Their food costs have went up! The cost of everything has gone up. But their pay has not!

That is why we are asking members who work in Waste Services and Early Years and Schools to vote yes for strike action.

Your pay ballot should be hitting your doorstep now and it is in a blue envelope. You should return it as soon as possible.

The ballot is open until 29 July.

We need to show decision makers that we are serious about the cost of living crisis and what comes into our pay packets.

Vote yes for strike action.

Strike action is always a last resort, but local government workers are again being overlooked for a decent pay rise. Enough is enough!!

Response from Kate Forbes to our request for a meeting

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Kate Forbes, has responded to our request for a meeting with herself, the First Minister and COSLA to discuss LG finance and implications for pay – her response is attached for your information.  In short she has stated that she is not prepared to meet with us. You will be as appalled by this as we are.  We have issued the attached press release in response.

Kate Forbes response to trade-unions

UNISON Scotland Media release

UNISON to ballot 25,000 school staff and waste and recycling workers for strike over pay tomorrow, after Kate Forbes refuses offer of last-ditch talks

UNISON will start an industrial action ballot tomorrow (Friday 10 June) for 25,000 local government workers in schools, early years, waste and recycling across Scotland. The ballot will take 7 weeks and will close on 26 July. 

UNISON are recommending the workforce vote yes to strike action as the only way left to move the employer’s position.  They intend to shut schools across Scotland when children return after the school summer break.

In a last-ditch attempt to avert industrial action processes UNISON wrote to the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and Minister of Finance Kate Forbes, on 1 June to ask that they meet with the trade unions to discuss the funding for local authorities to improve the pay offer.

Kate Forbes has written to UNISON today and said ‘it would not be appropriate to interfere in these negotiations, given their devolved nature’ and that ‘it is therefore for you to negotiate with COSLA and ‘respectfully declined the tripartite meeting being proposed by COSLA’.

Johanna Baxter, UNISON Scotland head of local government said: “Local government workers have been offered a miserly 2%.  With inflation at a 40 year high this goes nowhere near compensating them for the cost-of-living crisis or the loss in the value of their pay following real terms pay cuts over a decade of austerity. This comes on the back of the Scottish government announcing cuts to public services that Margaret Thatcher would be proud of, in their recent spending review.” “The fact they will not sit down with COSLA and the trade unions to try and find a solution is a kick in the teeth to all local government workers. They have forgotten already who was educating our children, cleaning our communities, caring for our vulnerable and burying our dead throughout the pandemic. Local government workers keep society running. We have no option left and will ballot 25,000 school, nursery and waste and recycling workers tomorrow.”