STAFF WILL BE URGED TO REJECT PAY OFFER

Council workers offered three per cent increase

UNISON members will be urged to give the thumbs down to a fresh pay offer when a vote is held on the deal in the next few weeks.

Officials of the union have for the past eight months been locked in negotiations over pay with their employers’ organisation, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).

Following talks last Thursday between the two sides, council bosses offered a three per cent pay increase for all local authority workers earning up to £80,000. However, UNISON, who have a 1400-strong membership at Stirling Council, say they will recommend rejection of the offer.

Secretary of UNISON’s Stirling branch Lorraine Thomson said the offer was unacceptable.

“It does nothing for the majority of local government members who earn well under £36,500,” she added.

“There is also nothing in this offer to redress our lost pay over the past 10 years and given the RPI inflation rate is now 3.5 per cent, in real terms this is still a pay cut. On that basis we will be advising our members to reject the offer.”

Vice chair of UNISON local government committee Carol Ball said: “A decade of pay cuts has left local government workers very angry. In the end our members make the decision and we will be balloting them to ask what they want to do.

“UNISON campaigns have made real progress.”

She added: “It is only through our action that we have seen the end to the public sector pay cap, we have got more money on the table from employers, and the employers have agreed that all local government workers should be treated equally.

“UNISON will continue the campaign for all our local government members, especially those on the lowest pay.”

COSLA’s resources spokesperson Councillor Gail Macgregor said: “Our policy on pay parity across the workforce means that we have to be fair to all of our workforce. That is why the same improved offer has been made to all four of the bargaining groups we are in discussions with.

“We have for a number of years now targeted more of the pay resource at the bottom end of the pay scales by consistently applying, or bettering, the Living Wage. “

She added: “Our own research and analysis of this tells us that between the period 2010 to 2017, the lowest paid have benefitted from anywhere between 13.62 per cent and 35.73 per cent rather than the 5.6 per cent to 6.6 per cent increases to the remainder of the ... workforce.

“Our objective is to maintain those gains for those in low pay.”