AN SNP group has accused Labour of creating a "discriminatory" pay scheme after Glasgow City Council announced plans to dismiss and rehire around 23,000 workers under new contracts.
The Glasgow SNP Group has blamed the former Labour administration, which governed the council until 2017, for introducing the current pay arrangements.
On Thursday, Glasgow City Council said that talks to resolve a long-running equal pay dispute with the Unite, GMB and Unison unions had broken down.
The council said that all non-teaching staff would be dismissed and re-employed on new contracts from January 1 in order to end the existing pay arrangements.
The dispute relates to a pay and grading system introduced by Glasgow City Council in 2006 under the then Labour administration, which later led to equal pay claims from thousands of workers.
Cllr Allan Casey, City Convener for Workforce, Homelessness and Addiction Services, said the local authority had improved their offer, adding that it was a "good and fair deal".
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He said GMB and Unite said they were prepared to put this offer to their members, but Unison were not.
Cllr Casey added: "After months of negotiations, we improved our offer and found additional resources to support our workplace and keep our city running. [Workers] deserve to be paid fairly and equally for the work that they do.
"We believe this was a good and fair deal for our workforce."
Unison has said it will “ballot its members on an offer once discussions have concluded” and argued that staff must not be “bounced into a shoddy deal”.
Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra said: "It's beggars belief that the SNP council is threatening to railroad through fire and rehire before it is made illegal in this country by the UK Labour government.
"It may not break the letter of the law, but it certainly breaks the spirit of it. It's a despicable way to treat working people. It's straight out of the Tory playbook.
"All parties need to get round the table and hammer out a deal. Working people should never be threatened like this again."
But Cllr Casey insisted it was "Labour's mess", adding: "It's rich that Labour are talking about being ashamed because it is their mess and inaction which has caused this pay discrimination to be in place for decades."
The SNP remain committed to ending this discrimination and we will be at the table if Unison want to re-engage."
