West Dunbartonshire latest
by Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser
“We want a strike ballot and we want it now!”
That has been the theme of angry speeches by many West Dunbartonshire workers at a succession of gigantic union mass meetings, attended by over 400-500 at a time. And every time one of them said this, they were greeted with massive applause.
The SNP council is indulging in daylight robbery. In May, as part of the Single Status agreement on equal pay, the council agreed a Labour proposal to give workers back money backdated to April 2006. Scottish Socialist Party councillor Jim Bollan abstained, supporting the payment of back money to (mainly) women who have been hired on the cheap for decades, but opposing the detriment to other workers’ pay and conditions wrapped up in the package.
But the deal was agreed by the council and then by 80 per cent of the workforce in union ballots.
As Charlie McDonald, convener of UNITE, told the recent Dumbarton SSP public meeting on the issue, “We agreed this package because although we are due far more than that in back money, we didn’t want to be portrayed as greedy amongst the wider public, or lay ourselves open to blame for council service cuts.”
But detriment to many workers – including pay cuts of £2.50 an hour to Home Care staff! - wasn’t enough for the ever-so-radical SNP. They called an illegal council meeting in August, reversed the May council decision (in breach of the council's standing orders which state no decision can be revised within 6 months), taking the back money off hard-pressed council workers, many of whom had by then spent it in anticipation! Workers will lose up to £27,000 in a few cases, thousands of pounds each for thousands of others.
The workers are up in arms at this blatant theft. Mass meetings have denounced the council, agreed the union officials' legal challenges through the Standards Commission, but increasingly also demanded their unions immediately start ballots to strike for their back money.
SSP councillor Jim Bollan has been invited to address the mass meetings, greeted by warm applause every time as he stands up to speak.
“I believe we can win on this if the 3 unions stick together, and unite with the local communities. The SNP councillors’ group is in meltdown,” Jim told the meetings. “And the SSP will be proud to support you if you go for industrial action, which the national pay dispute shows is the best way to defeat these attacks on workers.
'There is no doubt in my mind the bigger picture is that the SNP want to privatise chunks of our services, so they want to suppress wages and conditions to attract private business to cherry-pick.”
Charlie McDonald agreed with these warnings, adding, “Throughout history working people have never gained anything by being gifted it, we have had to fight for it. The council wants to undermine the collective, the union, by taking people in and bullying them into signing new, inferior contracts. Our advice is sign nothing, the unions are going into dispute.”
The very successful SSP public meeting, addressed by Charlie, Jim, local UNISON steward Pauline Bradley and Richie Venton (SSP trade union organiser) encouraged the unions to look at a public demonstration to counter lies and black propaganda taken out by the council in paid adverts, alongside urgent preparations for industrial action.