Category: Workplace issues

Climate Adaptation in the Workplace

 Thu, 16 September 2021 | 10:00 – 13:00

We’ve all seen news reports in recent days and months on the immensely destructive impact of extreme weather events around the world. Climate change is hitting hard. It’s important, in addition to work on how we reduce emissions in a Just Transition, to look at how we adapt, including at work to protect workers.

The workshop is open to members of all Scottish trade unions. It will, of course, be of particular interest to health and safety and green/environment reps, but no prior knowledge or experience is required. It builds upon the preliminary webinar held on 13 July, which provided an overview of how climate change will impact Scottish workplaces. However, all are welcome and there is no need to have attended the earlier webinar to attend this workshop. A video of the previous session can be viewed here:

This is part of a joint project with the STUC and is being taken forward by UNISON Scotland working with Adaptation Scotland. Contributions in the workshop (and from the survey, below) will help inform content for the handbook, due to be published during the period of the UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November. The handbook and video presentation resources are aimed at helping trade union reps to champion well-designed workplace adaptation solutions that help tackle inequality and promote social justice.

Please take part in this short survey if you’ve not yet done so. You can also volunteer via the survey for a longer interview.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BSNHMLN

Pay claim – Industrial action

UNISON, Scotland’s largest local government union, has started to issue formal industrial action ballot papers in a dispute over pay.

COSLA, the umbrella body representing council employers, had previously offered staff earning less than £25,000 a flat rate rise of £800. Last week COSLA came back with a revised offer of £850 – working out at approximately 97p per week for the lowest paid staff.

The union says council staff who have kept services and schools running throughout the pandemic deserve a proper pay rise. They say the latest pay offer falls far short of their pay claim and does little to address low pay which has become endemic following a decade of austerity.

The trade union says that councils have suffered a decade of cuts and jobs losses, and that staff have received year-on-year pay cuts. It has meant delivering services has become increasingly stressful for the workforce.

Pressure is mounting on both COSLA leaders and the Scottish Government to find an urgent resolution to this issue. COSLA leaders met again on Friday (August 27).

UNISON intends to take targeted strike action, which means select groups of workers will be balloted. These include members working in school cleaning, school catering, school janitorial as well as those working in waste and recycling services.

Lorraine Thomson, UNISON Stirling Branch Secretary said: “The last 18 months have taken an enormous toll on council staff who have been working flat out for no reward. Their courage and sacrifices need to be rewarded, yet the employers are failing to recognise their efforts. “These workers, mostly women, are amongst the lowest paid in the country and have seen their pay drop substantially in recent years. The pay offer falls far short of their colleagues in the NHS and local government workers are left feeling exhausted and undervalued. Scotland’s council workers deserve fair pay.”

Johanna Baxter, UNISON Scotland head of local government, said: “We’ve all relied on council staff to keep our communities clean and safe, protect the most vulnerable and to work in our schools throughout successive lockdowns to allow others to work. “Without these workers going above and beyond to keep services running over the past year their colleagues in the NHS would have been left without childcare, our mortuaries would have been overwhelmed, our children would have been left without an education and our elderly would have been left without care. Yet to date they have received no reward or recognition of their efforts at all. It’s simply not good enough – our council staff are worth more.”

UNISON Save our Services campaign

We have released:

In addition to the above the following actions have also taken place:

  • General Secretary Christina McAnea has asked members and the public to consider, ‘Is this the kind of community you want to live in?’ in her new blog.
  • Youtube advertising
  • Email to all local gov members
  • Lead story in Activist Digital
  • Facebook, Insta, Twitter and Youtube posts

LG Update 04 August 2021

Further guidance will be provided to businesses to help them adopt measures to mitigate risks, including ensuring good ventilation; maintaining good hand hygiene; practising respiratory hygiene; getting vaccinated; and continuing to engage with Test and Protect. 

Beyond Level 0 

Further detail about measures announced . 

Further guidance will be provided to businesses to help them adopt measures to mitigate risks, including ensuring good ventilation; maintaining good hand hygiene; practising respiratory hygiene; getting vaccinated; and continuing to engage with Test and Protect. 

Some baseline measures will remain in place: 

  • it will continue to be the law, subject to exceptions, that face coverings must be worn in indoor public places and on public transport 
  • Test & Protect will continue to contact-trace positive cases. To assist with this there will be a continued requirement for indoor hospitality and similar venues to collect the contact details of customers. Anyone who is required to self-isolate will, if eligible, continue to have access to support 
  • we will work closely with local incident management teams on appropriate outbreak control measures 
  • we will continue to use travel restrictions, as and when necessary, to restrict the spread of outbreaks and protect against the risk of importation of new variants 
  • for now, we will continue to advise home working where possible, recognising that some staff will start to return to offices in line with staff wellbeing discussions and business need. we will encourage employers to consider for the longer term, as the Scottish Government is doing, a hybrid model of home and office working – which may, of course, have benefits beyond the need to control a virus 
  • we will, for a limited period, keep in place a gateway process through which organisers of outdoors events of more than 5000 and indoor events of more than 2000 will have to apply for permission. This will allow us and local authorities to be assured of the arrangements in place to reduce risk 
  • we will continue to issue appropriate guidance to assist individuals and businesses to reduce the risk of transmission as much as possible, such as rigorous hygiene, including regular hand washing. 


More information can be found here https://www.gov.scot/news/scotland-to-move-beyond-level-0 and here https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-update-first-ministers-statement-3-august-2021-1 

Asymptomatic Testing Programme Update 

Please view a letter that has been sent to local authorities asking that they include communications around on-return asymptomatic at-home testing in their plans for return to schools in the coming weeks.  

An update on the asymptomatic testing programme is also included. 

Ecouraging participation examples 29-july-2021
Letter to directors and testing leads 29th July 2021

Revised Schools Guidance

Following the First Minister’s statement today the revised schools guidance can be found here: Coronavirus: reducing risks in schools guidance

To allow time to monitor the impact of a new policy on self-isolation for U18s, and to take account of the unique features of the school environment at the time of return, the guidance advises the continued application of most of the existing mitigations for a period of up to 6 weeks; for example, the position on physical distancing in schools should effectively remain the same, despite the wider changes to these requirements.

As with previous versions, the guidance will be kept under constant review, and if data and evidence suggest that any specific mitigations can be removed at an earlier stage advice will be provided to that effect.