Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/586/7498
From The Socialist newspaper, 30 June 2009
Glasgow council: Social work dept staff start all-out strike
Frontline clerical/admin workers in Glasgow council's social work department began an all out indefinite strike action on 1 July. The dispute is over the failure of the council to pay the 400 workers a 'working context and demands' payment under a new pay and grading scheme.
Brian Smith, Glasgow Unison branch secretary
The payment is awarded to council workers to compensate where their jobs require higher than normal physical effort and dexterity or involve uncomfortable working conditions.
Also where there are potentially higher health and safety risks or involve working with people who are distressed and vulnerable. The payments range from £520 to over £1,000 per year.
It is impossible to justify not paying a 'working context and demands' payment to workers who staff social work receptions, work in care homes and centres, answer telephones, process social work reports and take minutes at child/adult protection hearings and reviews of the cases of vulnerable people. All of these can be emotionally distressing work.
People who use social work services are often distressed or upset or angry and are vulnerable. In these circumstances the frontline clerical/admin workers are often their first point of contact. All other social work frontline workers get a 'working context and demands' payment.
It is ironic that the council's new pay and grading scheme was supposed to be about delivering equal pay for lower-paid women. Yet the council is refusing to apply its own rules to clerical/admin workers, most of whom are lower-paid women workers.
The council has also been promising a new clerical/admin staffing structure for years. The failure to deliver this new structure has saved the council a fortune. In addition they have saved thousands of pounds through the non-filling of frontline clerical/admin vacancies.
The decision to take strike action was not reached lightly. Please do all you can to support the strikers to win their just and modest demand.
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In The Socialist 30 June 2009:
Youth fight for jobs
Decent jobs not poverty schemes!
Socialist Party editorial
Victories show the way forward for struggles
Total's fat fingers in every pie
"We came out with Lindsey and we'll go back with Lindsey"
Socialist Party campaigns
New Labour's house building plans amount to just a drop in the ocean
Pride not profit - London Pride Saturday 4 July
Campaign to save Lewisham Bridge school continuing
BNP: Looking beneath the suits
National Shop Stewards Network
National Shop Stewards Network Conference Confident and enthusiastic
Socialist Party Marxist analysis
25 years ago: Liverpool - a city that dared to fight
Workplace news and events
Glasgow council: Social work dept staff start all-out strike
Justice for the Shrewsbury pickets march and rally
Construction industry in major crisis
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