Place – Unite CEC Branch

Pay 2023: COSLA refuse request for more money for a fair deal

Time to strike as councillors refuse a decent pay offer for council workers

On Tuesday Unite, Unison and GMB met with COSLA to discuss progress on our pay claim. We requested for the second time in a week that the Scottish Joint Council (SJC – the three unions and the councillors representing the employers’ side) approach the Scottish Government for additional monies to improve the pay offer to give a decent pay rise for local government workers.

Councillors of all parties voted against this motion—refusing to go to the government for more money, despite understanding there is not enough in the pot. The COSLA Leaders—consisting of Council Leaders of all councils in Scotland—had already voted to not go to the government for more money at their meeting last Friday.

This made it clear that the trade unions have no other way to secure a pay fair deal, but to ballot our members to take industrial action.

We now are deciding which areas to target and will be balloting soon.

Read how to get ballot ready so we can show the government that Unite members won’t sit back and settle for a real-terms pay cut.

Forty-one of 63 Councillors sign the unions’ Pledge for Public Services

Councillors support no compulsory redundancies and the fight against privatisation

Most councillors have now signed the Pledge for Public Services in support of the demands of the Joint Trade Unions of Edinburgh Council (Unite, Unison and the GMB):

keeping the ‘no compulsory redundancy’ pledge
in-housing public services
demanding funding for local government.

Forty-one of the 63 councillors in Edinburgh have signed—all the Green, Labour and SNP councillors and independent councillor Ross McKenzie. No Lib Dem of Tory councillors have signed.

Check out our page on the Pledge for Public Services to see if your councillor has signed.

How you can help

Telematics policy—controlling the ‘spy in the cab’

On Tuesday 23 May, the telematics policy will go to the Policy and Sustainability Committee for approval by the councillors. The Joint Trade Unions of Edinburgh Council (Unite, Unison and GMB) have been negotiating on this policy since June 2022.

The unions have not agreed the policy as a collective agreement.

Through open and meaningful negotiation, we have come a long way in improving the policy to protect the workforce against misuse of this powerful surveillance tool.

Here is a summary of the matters discussed and the improvements made.

Read the telematics policy going for approval.

What is telematics?

Telematics refers to technology that monitors how you are driving:

Unite members reject COSLA pay offer

84% vote to reject—now we prepare to strike

Unite’s consultative ballot results are in and 84% of members in local government across Scotland have voted to reject the pay offer. This sends a clear message to COSLA that this must be improved.

Thanks to all who voted. If you did not receive a ballot, check your contact details by logging into MyUnite or calling 0131 556 9676.

What happens next?

Jobs in Waste and Cleansing—the promise from the picket

Following campaigning from Unite, the Council is improving how it staffs Waste and Cleansing by

reducing the proportion of agency staff
improving the recruitment process for agency staff going for full-time jobs.

This is a significant result for the workforce in Waste and Cleansing.

The promise from the picket

During last year’s strike it came to light how many agency staff were in Waste and Cleansing across the Council. Our estimate put it at around 30-40%, with some areas being staffed almost entirely by agency staff.

Street Cleansing move to Seafield Depot

Street Cleansing workers from the Cowan’s Close and Craigmillar depots are moving to the Seafield depot by the end of the month. This has been a long process, during which members have raised numerous concerns about the new facilities and the arrangements for the move.

We have had successes in addressing concerns raised in November, yet some items remain under discussion

Below, we’ll outline the issues members have raised and the progress on them If there’s something noted as resolved that you believe is not, contact a rep in Waste and Cleansing.

We will conduct regular site inspections and continue to engage with members as they settle in to the new depot.

Resolved

Cleaning and filling vehicles

Members raised concerns about the lack of facilities for cleaning vehicles and filling Hakos. Unite raised this and we now have assurance that there will be:

Pledge for Public Services

This year’s City of Edinburgh Council budget meeting descended into farce as councillors voted for other parties’ budgets and ended up with a budget that most did not want and, if acted upon, could see compulsory redundancies and privatisations in our council.

Our branch reps and officials were first off the block to challenge both the Leader of the Council and Chief Executive at the council “thank you event” for workers, held at the Assembly Rooms the day after the budget farce . Both stated that the budget did not set council policy and that they were working to ensure that these items would not be acted upon. Despite these apparent assurances our branch issued a consultative ballot which last week returned a resounding 94% willingness for Industrial Action over these issues.

Unite the Union has been working on reversing privatisation for years. Recently our branch’s pledge to agency workers in Waste and Cleansing (given during the pay dispute in August 2022) has seen over 40 offered permanent council jobs and a programme of rolling recruitment enacted to reduce agency use in Waste and Cleansing to under 10%. We will be monitoring this closely as well as continuing our press for the remunicipalisation of many of the services outsourced over the past few decades.

Unite, GMB and unison are campaigning for Public Services in Edinburgh and hope this will see positive results for our city and the workers who serve it. A media release has been issued accordingly:

Edinburgh Joint Trade Unions launch campaign, calling on City of Edinburgh Council to give workers job security.