Council workers are balloted over pay offer

Council workers across the country, including Stirling and Clackmannanshire, are being balloted to see if they would take industrial action over a national pay offer.

Trade union Unison has recommended members vote against the pay offer and in favour of action - up to strike action - to secure an improvement.

The pay deal offered all council workers earning less than £25,000 an £800 rise.

The consultative ballot, which began on Tuesday, runs until April 28.

UNISON Stirling branch secretary Lorraine Thomson said:“Local government and its workforce are no longer the‘poor relation’of the public service - we have become the‘distant relative’which is never discussed and has long been forgotten.

“The current offer was simply lifted from the Scottish Government’s announced Public Sector Pay Policy - a pay policy that the Scottish Government has itself breached in offering higher pay rises to other public sector workers. Our members deserve better.”

The Joint Trade Unions state that local government workers have gone above and beyond in their response to the Covid pandemic – keeping local services going in the most difficult of circumstances - and that COSLA’s offer falls short, and does little to address issues of low pay and other concerns.

Johanna Baxter, UNISON Scotland head of local government, said:“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.”

A spokesman for COSLA said this week: “This offer remains on the table while we continue with ongoing constructive negotiations.”