Jim McFarlane, Unison NEC (personal capacity)
Scottish council workers have received a fifth pay offer for 2022/23 from the employers. This follows strike action of waste workers across a majority of Scotland’s councils, which brought bin services to a halt across 21 councils.
Day after day, the news bulletins were dominated by pictures of rubbish piling up in towns and cities across Scotland. Despite this, the public support was overwhelming, with social media and news websites full of supportive comments.
An escalation in the action was planned, with bin workers taking further strike action, and thousands of workers in schools and nurseries also preparing to strike.
Faced with a growing strike wave across local government and mass public support, the council employers, CoSLA, and the Scottish government were forced into a series of retreats.
At the start of 2022, the joint unions – Unison, Unite and GMB – tabled a pay claim for a £3,000 uplift, and over the summer balloted workers in waste services and schools and nurseries for action.
CoSLA’s pay offer was initially a derisory 2%. This was increased to 3.5%, and, as the selective action ballots were coming in from all three unions, the offer was increased again to 5%.
During this wave of strike action, CoSLA and the Scottish government retreated again.
The 5% offer was to be supplemented by “one-off cost-of-living” payments – described by CoSLA as being at the “absolute extremes of affordability”. The SNP deputy first minister, John Swinney, railed that “the government cannot offer any more money.”
All three unions rejected the proposed deal and agreed the planned strikes would go ahead. Swinney was then bumped and first minister Nicola Sturgeon agreed to meet with the employers and the unions. Arising from these talks, a new proposed deal emerged on Friday 2 September.
The new offer will see full-time council workers gain a £2,000 rise for those earning up to £20,500, and a £1,925 increase for those on up to £39,000. This is to be fully consolidated into pay for 2022/23 and beyond.
For bin workers on around £20,000 that’s a 10% rise. For workers on £25,000 it’s around 8%, and just under 7% for those on £30,000.
Half of Scotland’s 250,000 local government workers earn less than £25,000.
CoSLA and the Scottish government have been forced to concede much more than they had planned. All of it a result of the preparedness of workers to take strike action. All council workers will also get an extra one day in annual leave.
However, the view of Socialist Party Scotland members in the council unions and many union activists who we work with is that there was more to be won.
Action was due to escalate, including the shutting down of hundreds of schools and nurseries. 19 of Scotland’s councils were also going to see more strikes in waste and recycling.
Moreover, thousands of other council workers were likely to join the action in October, after the re-ballots of those branches that did not quite reach the 50% turnout over the summer.
We therefore argued, at the Scottish Unison local government committee, for example, for the strikes to continue, and to use that as a platform to win further concessions on pay.
As it is, all three unions will now consult their membership on the offer. Unison, Unite and the GMB leaderships are arguing for acceptance.
Our view is that the offer is not yet good enough, at levels that are below current inflation. It is still £1,000 less than the joint unions’ pay claim.
The need for a fighting, socialist leadership of the trade union movement to match the determination of the membership to struggle has been underlined by this dispute.
Against the backdrop of a spiralling cost-of-living crisis, the appetite to struggle will only grow. Indeed, all unions saw a surge in recruitment in waste services and schools and nurseries as a result of the strike ballots and strikes.
Union activists should call for rejection and for the action to continue. If that position is not won, it is only a few months until new talks open up on next year’s pay deal. With the cost-of-living crisis set to worsen, a return to strike action over pay seems inevitable.
The Scottish government made a statement the day after it announced its legislative programme, which effectively blamed soaring inflation for £500 million in cuts to this year’s budget. In the statement it pointed to public sector pay rises, as well as the costs of running government departments.
Teachers and NHS workers are also preparing to fight on pay. The Scottish government says workers deserve these pay rises, but it is cutting budgets elsewhere to pay for them.
That is why coordinated strike action by all unions planning action is essential, and must be combined with fighting against cuts to funding. We will do all we can to build a leadership locally and nationally that can face up to the need to build mass coordinated strike action in the months ahead.