Bin strike threat as council workers reject Cosla pay offer

Union bosses are to hold talks about potential industrial action after council staff voted “overwhelmingly” to reject their latest pay deal.

Unison represents more council staff than any other union.

Now thousands of its members have voted against accepting an increased pay offer put forward by council umbrella body Cosla.

As many as 86 per cent of those voting rejected the terms, which included an hourly increase of 67p or 3.6 per cent, whichever is higher.

The union has said that "falls short of expectations given the 25 per cent real-terms pay cut over the past 14 years" and council staff are "angry" that this is lower than the 5.5 per cent agreed for some other public service workers.

Unison was one of three trade unions to suspend bin strikes over the pay row earlier this summer.

Now senior figures are to meet to "discuss next steps".

Its mandates for industrial action cover waste and recycling at 13 councils, plus education and early years staff in five regions.

Colette Hunter, chair of the Unison Scotland local government committee, said: "Cosla and the Scottish Government need to understand the anger among council staff. They want a fair increase to stop their pay consistently falling behind, and for their wage increase to be in line with other areas of the economy.

"The last thing anyone wants to do is go on strike, but local government workers deserve better."

Cosla said it is "deeply disappointed" to learn that the "strong, above inflation" pay offer was rejected by Unison members.

A spokesperson said: "This offer is at the absolute limit of affordability for local government and fully exhausts all available additional funding from Scottish Government.

"Local government have a responsibility to ensure sustainable service delivery for our communities across Scotland. We are clear that increasing the value of any pay offer would have very serious consequences. We remain concerned that Unison’s expectations cannot be met without further unpalatable difficult decisions.

"We are aware that communities will be concerned about the potential impact of industrial action on the most vulnerable. We would urge Unison to reconsider our strong offer which has an overall value of 4.27 per cent."