THE First Minister has said that councils should make a “decent” pay rise offer to try and avert the forthcoming strikes in numerous local authorities.
Unions last week announced a slate of strike action by waste and recycling workers in authorities across Scotland, subsequently rejecting a new 3.5% pay offer that was described as a "dire response to the cost of living crisis" by the union GMB Scotland.
Katie Hagmann, a resources spokesperson for Cosla, said leaders would like to make a better offer but feared that the extra spending could hurt local services.
She called on the Scottish Government to provide more funding.
Ministers paid out £140 million to local authorities last week, which they say they expect to be matched by councils to provide a good offer.
Staff are scheduled to walk out between August 26 and 29 and September 7 and 10 unless a deal can be struck.
Cleansing workers at Edinburgh City Council who are members of the GMB union also announced their intention to strike during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe between August 18 and August 30.
During a visit to a social housing initiative in Glasgow Nicola Sturgeon said: “Just last week, the Scottish Government gave £140m additional funding to local government to help try to resolve pay claims.
“Therefore it’s really disappointing, in my view, that local authorities haven’t yet offered a decent 5% pay increase there.
“So I would call on local councils, we’ve put money on the table, to do your bit now so that we can resolve the issues.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar (below) was also asked about the industrial dispute as he visited a community centre in Clydebank.
He called on both COSLA and the Scottish Government to do more to improve the pay offer.
He said: “I know the Scottish Government put forward an additional £140 million to try and increase the scale of the pay offer.
“But let’s be honest, £140 million across 32 local authorities with all the workers we’re talking about is nowhere near sufficient or good enough.
“And so what the Scottish Government needs to seriously do is to be working closely with COSLA, working closely with local government, to get people a fair pay settlement and I’ll be supporting our trade union colleagues in arguing that case.”
Unison Scotland’s head of local government, Johanna Baxter, said: “Our members will rightly question why the First Minister is calling on councils to make a 5% offer to their workforce, without providing them additional money to do so and when that level of offer has been resoundingly rejected by other public sector workers.
“It is also presumptuous to assume that an offer at that level would avert strike action – with inflation running at currently more than 10%, this level of offer would be a pay cut.
“It’s no secret that over 80% of council funds comes from the Scottish Government. This is a ridiculous situation where both COSLA and the Scottish Government are now both openly acknowledging that the 3.5% offer that is on the table is nowhere near good enough but neither will take responsibility for improving it.
“It is no wonder our members are sick of the political posturing – both COSLA and the Scottish Government need to get back round the table and agree a funding package that will allow a significantly improved pay offer to be made to these essential workers.”
Scotland will also be hit by disruption on the railways on Thursday, with strike action by the RMT union in other parts of the UK impacting on the signalling provisions in Scotland.
As such, only a few services will be available, mostly in the central belt.
When asked about the disruption, the First Minister suggested that the UK Government should “get back to their desks”.
She said: “This is another example of the UK Government being missing in action,” she said.
“This is a UK-wide Network Rail and other English train operating companies dispute – it’s not a ScotRail dispute – and yet Scotland is going to be impacted by it.
“So my message to the UK Government on this, as well as on the cost of living crisis, is for goodness sake get back to your desks and start doing the job that you’re there to do.
“Take the action to resolve this dispute so that people in Scotland and people elsewhere in the UK don’t have to suffer this disruption.”
The First Minister was also asked her opinion of the Tory leadership hustings, which took place in Perth last night.
She told STV News: “I have to admit I didn’t watch it, I took the view that life is too short.
“But from what I’ve seen, they had nothing to say that was of any relevance to the people of Scotland and, crucially, we’ve got to remember that if these two candidates stood in an election in Scotland, they wouldn’t win.
“I don’t think either of them will be a good Prime Minister, that’s my opinion, others may take a different view, but fundamentally, neither of them would win an election in Scotland.”
Both candidates re-affirmed their position at last night’s hustings that they would not allow another independence referendum should they become Prime Minister next month.
Rishi Sunak also emphasised that he would be scrutinising spending by the Scottish government if elected.
The First Minister said: “The Tories haven’t won an election in Scotland in my lifetime and yet time and time and time again Scotland has to accept being governed by Tories that Scotland did not vote for.”
“It’s a massive democratic deficit and they constantly just want to deny democracy in Scotland and deny the people of Scotland the right to make a decision on their future.
“I’ll work with whoever wins, just as I have with the three other Prime Ministers I have worked with in my time as First Minister; David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, that was perhaps harder than it was than with the other two, and whatever Prime Minister emerges from this ridiculous contest, I’ll do my best to work with them.
“But the starting point has to be that they respect the Scottish Parliament, they respect devolution, they respect Scotland and there has been precious little evidence of that in this debate so far.”
Sturgeon added: “We had a convention at the start of devolution that Westminster couldn’t legislate in devolved areas without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.
“That has been breached several times in the last few years. You’ve seen already in this debate the two candidates talking about the different ways in which they can go over the head of the Scottish Parliament or undermine it.
“I don’t think devolution in its current form is safe from the Conservatives.”
