Collateral damage of Glasgow fire and rehire threat could cost local elections
Glasgow City Council is in a mess of both Labour and the SNP’s making - a hellish situation ahead of local elections
Well, that was a nuclear approach to industrial relations.
An hour before the start of a bank holiday weekend, Glasgow City Council issued emails threatening to fire and rehire 23,000 workers.
The bomb went off and the unions responded in kind. The Scottish Government stepped in and a little over 24 hours later, the threat was suspended.
Imagine the stress.
New Scottish Labour Leader Michael Marra had this to say: "This should never have happened and can never be allowed to happen again.”
He is proud, he added, that fire and rehire will be illegal from January thanks to the Labour government “standing up for working people”. (It’s also why the council acted so swiftly - a deadline sharpens the mind).
And now let us consider the Spider Man meme, that seminal internet text of two identical Spider Men pointing at one another.
Where was the Labour administration when it came to standing up for working women?
It was a Labour-run council that shafted female workers in its 2004 pay-and-grading system.
READ MORE:A barely audible 'guilty' marks the pinnacle of the Peter Murrell drama that has dogged the SNP
It defended the pay system in court until the SNP inherited the problem in 2017.
Neither party has come up with roses here. The situation has cost the city £770 million so far.
At least Mr Marra is giving a named quote. Not a single SNP political figure peeked above the parapet to defend this mad wheeze.
What a test for newly-appointed council leader Ricky Bell to have to deal with. Well, we’ll never know.
Colin Edgar, the council’s director of communication and governance, was instead sent out to explain that senior figures in the council “felt sick” about the decision.
No wonder. The council sent out letters with a mental health hotline number at the bottom before sodding off for a bank holiday long weekend.
Several sources in and around the council talks said the administration is “deeply ashamed” to have issued the dismissal letters.
There was a sense that they did not want to be associated with the move as it contradicts the SNP government’s stated position on workers’ rights.
A Unison insider described the package that was voted through by the council as “dreadful”.
Unison say they could not ballot their members on that package. The current offer stands to lose low-paid women thousands of pounds, the union claims.
Insiders say the union believes more money can be found - either by the council or the government.
And it must be found, otherwise women will be at a financial detriment and the council facing years more litigation on equal pay.
One Unison official gave the example of advocacy workers in Assist, the domestic violence support service, who are projected to lose £11,000 per year.
Those women deal with risk assessments for homicides. The matching process evaluating their job said they are required to concentrate for 30 minutes at a time, which was described as the equivalent to painting a window frame.
The issue - again - is that women’s work is consistently undervalued, underpaid and this mess is left.
It’s a mess the SNP wants cleared up before the local elections next year. So too should Labour. Neither party wants this as a talking point, particularly not with Reform UK looking confident in early polling.
This issue is lives and livelihoods. The politics should come second yet perhaps it is of benefit to all concerned - workers, unions, politicians - that the election looms.
Again, a deadline sharpens the mind.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.