THE SNP leadership candidates are set to be grilled by Roz Foyer as The National and SNP Trade Union Group host a hustings in Glasgow on Saturday.
Organised in conjunction with the TUG, the event will be live-streamed across our website, YouTube and Facebook between 5pm and 7pm on Saturday March 11.
Humza Yousaf, Ash Regan and Kate Forbes will be probed by STUC general secretary Foyer on their policy platforms, commitment to workers' rights and what they would do as first ministers to make things better for the working people of Scotland.
WATCH LIVE: The National and SNP TUG leadership candidate hustings debate
Ahead of the event, Yousaf vowed to refuse to implement the UK Government’s anti-strike bill if he wins the contest to become Scotland’s next first minister.
The National’s editor Laura Webster said: “We are excited to host a leadership hustings in conjunction with the SNP TUG and probe the candidates on the issues that affect working people in Scotland.
“With the Tories anti-strike bill looking to rip up trade union protections, Brexit causing staffing issues across the country, and a cost-of-living crisis plunging thousands of households into poverty, we wanted to focus on the priorities of staff on the front line.
“STUC general secretary Roz Foyer will give the contenders a grilling on their policy platforms and how they will help working Scots. It’s one not to be missed.
“You can tune in across our website, Facebook and Youtube from 5pm on Saturday March 11, and while our website comments section is for subscribers only, we would love for as many people to be involved as possible, and would encourage those with an interest in workers rights to take up our brilliant offer of access to three months of content for just £1.”
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Simon Barrow, national secretary of the SNP TUG, the party’s largest affiliate body, said: “We are enormously grateful to The National and the STUC for helping to make this independently organised hustings happen. This is an opportunity to look beyond the immediacy of SNP politics towards major issues confronting Scotland today and tomorrow.
“What SNP TUG members and trade unionists across Scotland are looking for is a vision of a better nation: one that puts public interest and investment above private accumulation and greed, which provides world-class health and public services, and which rethinks economics in terms of urgent social and planetary needs, not least the challenge of just transition away from fossil fuel dependency.
“Scotland has phenomenal renewable resources. The issue is who will own them and who will decide their future?
"We are hoping that the candidates will set out clear plans to make Scotland’s future shared, equal, independent, and internationalist.”
Speaking ahead of the hustings, Yousaf added: “The Minimum Service Bill is a straight-up Tory attack on worker’s rights.
“Rather than sit down with our key public sector workers and negotiate fair pay deals, the Tories plan to limit the right to strike so much as to make it meaningless and they plan to impose that legislation on Scotland’s public sector workers.
“I believe the best way to build strong relationships with public sector workers is to listen, to learn, and to negotiate openly and honestly. That’s what I did with NHS workers to ensure we had no strikes and it is why workers in Scotland are better paid than their counterparts in the rest of the UK.
“A government led by me will not implement this draconian legislation. It is not about keeping services running, it is a right-wing attack on workers' rights.
“Scotland’s workers' rights will be safe in my hands.”
