Achi news desk-
Following the two week consultation 97% of voting members want a formal strike vote if no proposal is “credible”. He has speculated that the offer from local authorities will be less than 3%.
Keir Greenaway, GMB Scotland’s senior public services organiser, said the pay offer was already too late and looked certain to be too low when councilors and MSPs were to receive a pay rise of more than 6%.
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He called for an urgent discussion between councils, unions and government ministers on how a fair wage offer can be funded.
Greenaway said: “Our members will rightly ask why our politicians believe they deserve a rise of more than 6% while council workers who provide vital frontline services do not.
“The hypocrisy would be astounding if it weren’t so completely predictable.
“We hoped that council leaders could have learned lessons from last year and acted with more urgency.
“That has not happened and the same mistakes are being made, with the same lack of action leading to the same increased support for industrial action.
“Our members have now made it clear that this unnecessary delay will no longer be tolerated.
“We have no time to waste and if the proposal, whenever it comes, is not credible, we will move quickly to a formal vote on industrial action.
“Councillors and ministers cannot say they have not been warned.
“Our members no longer have the patience to listen to council leaders pleading poverty while refusing to ask ministers for the money needed to pay staff fairly.
“Also they have no time to listen to Scottish Government ministers claiming that it is nothing to do with them after they announced a freeze on council tax without warning or consultation.
“This has become an annual pantomime of passing money and shifting blame between the councils and the government and our members have seen it too many times before.”
“Without collective bargaining at this stage, without funding for a negotiated, fair pay award, industrial action in our local authorities will be inevitable.”
