Dave Prentice with SSP Ediburgh Unison members on strike
Union activists pledge to step up their fight
by Richie Venton
THE strike of 200,000 council workers right across Scotland on 20 August
lived up to all trade unionists’ and socialists’ expectations - and then
some.
Schools, nurseries, bin depots, council offices, council-run libraries
and leisure centres, social work offices and a host of other workplaces
that provide daily frontline services were shut down in every local authority.
In some areas, such was the anger of workers at the pay-cutting proposals
of their employers that they refused to provide life and limb cover
even when the unions had agreed to it.
This was an unprecedented display of unity across all three unions (UNISON,
GMB and UNITE) in all 32 local authorities. Rallies gathered in Inverness,
Inverurie, Dundee, Edinburgh, Motherwell, Paisley and Glasgow.
Pickets and those at the rallies were drenched to the skin in the central
belt, but this did nothing to dampen their anger and determination to
win decent pay and stop attempts to imprison workers in a 3-year deal
that doesn’t match even half the level of current inflation, let alone
allow for price rises in the pipeline. Monsoon militancy prevailed, with
a great spirit of unity and strength.
The latter was reinforced by the simultaneous strike by 5,000 civil
service workers in Registers of Scotland and Scottish Government, in
direct conflict with the SNP government’s New Labour-style 2 per cent
pay ceiling for all public sector workers.
In some areas where council union branch leaderships were hesitant,
the members well outstripped their branch officers in the level of action
they produced.
And the unions have recruited in big numbers, confirming the old adage
that well-timed militant action emboldens the members and attracts
new members. Hundreds have joined in the larger branches, and for example
in Clackmannanshire, Scotland’s wee county, UNISON has recruited over
100 new members.
The rock solid success of the strike kicked down the doors of CoSLA,
who the very next day wrote to the unions offering negotiations, to
be held on 28 August.
Their letter is an extraordinary testament to the power of united workers’
action.
In it Cosla accepts that a 3-year deal is no good for either side!
They further recognise that 2.5 per cent is not acceptable to the workforce!
As one senior union activist said to me, this amounts to a surrender
notice, seeking to negotiate terms for the employers’ capitulation.
The powerful impact on the various levels of government and employers
was visible even the day before the strike and on 20 August itself,
as we commented on at the very successful SSP public meeting of strikers
after the union rally in Glasgow.
Stephen Purcell, New Labour leader of Glasgow city council had written
in the Evening Times that the CoSLA offer was too low, given inflation
(with the ominous clause that improved pay would require ‘modernisation’
buried deep in his article).
CoSLA leaders had admitted they would talk - in contrast to cancelling
the June Scottish Joint Council of unions and council reps because
of the pay dispute that had started by then.
They admitted inflation is now much greater than at the time of their
offer - a feeble cover for a climbdown in the face of strike action,
given that these people are supposed to have the foresight to plan major
chunks of the local economy!
And a devastating admission from employers who want workers to accept
a 3-year deal; they can’t even predict inflation levels over 3 months
let alone 3 years!
The SNP government declared itself ‘neutral’- an impossible posture
since Scottish government funding sets the parameters for local authority
budgets and therefore pay deals.
Scottish Labour leadership contenders declared their support of the strike!
A cynical exercise given New Labour’s record of under-funding council
budgets, privatising housing and numerous council services, carrying
out repeated waves of job cuts, and even threatening trade unionists
with jail for leading strikes in recent years.
With the power of the strike, plus the political configurations of rival
governments in Holyrood, Westminster and at council level, the conditions
for a victory are better than they have been for council workers in living
memory.
But nothing has yet been won, of course!
The notion of a 3-year deal is dead, as is 2.5 per cent.
SSP members and the overwhelming majority of trade unionists argue for
a one year deal to cater for economic instability, future inflation and
the ability of the unions to fight for appropriate increases next year.
The critical question as the negotiators meet is the power the unions
have at their elbow. The strike on 20 August rocked CoSLA - and the
Scottish government, though they are keeping quieter about it.
But the next stage of action will be vital to the outcome. To their
credit the unions have given no hint of suspending the action after CoSLA
conceded talks. A meeting of UNISON branch secretaries agreed to go for
another all-union one-day strike in mid-September, and it looks certain
at time of writing that UNITE and GMB will agree this.
UNISON is also planning to take out key sections of workers on selective
action before the mid-September one-day strike.
As Stephen Smellie, member of Scottish UNISON’s local government committee
told us,
“The employers will be left in no doubt that we are determined to win.
“The 20 August was not a token gesture, a one-off, but the start of a
determined strategy of industrial action, where every local authority
will be hit at the same time.
“It is vital the national unions pour every resource into this battle,
to support the members, to ensure the action continues and we win.
The first round has been won by the unity of the strike - the employers
have been forced into negotiations that for months they had refused to
take part in."