SNP should be 'grown ups' to avert bin strikes, as Anas Sarwar suggests 'millions of pounds' solution

Anas Sarwar said millions of pounds was heading to Scotland as a result of pay deals elsewhere in the UK, and some of this could be used to put more money on the table. 

Trade union leaders have confirmed waste and refuse workers will strike for eight days from August 14 in a dispute over pay. The industrial action will affect 26 out of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, including Edinburgh at the height of the festival season. It comes after a 3.2 per cent pay offer was rejected.

Cammy Day, the leader of Edinburgh City Council, has called on First Minister John Swinney to intervene and “find that little more to avert strike action”.

In 2022, a bin strike in Edinburgh during the festivals saw rubbish pile up in the city centre, with Public Health Scotland later issuing a health warning. 

Mr Sarwar, who was visiting FARE Scotland, a voluntary organisation in Easterhouse, said: "I think the Scottish Government urgently has to get round the table with Cosla [the council umbrella body], with some of the individual councils and with the trade unions and thrash out a deal. We've demonstrated in other parts of the UK now, in a matter of weeks, what you can achieve when you're willing to be grown up and get round the table and come to an agreement. 

"I think the Scottish Government should be taking that same approach now with the bin strikes."

He added: "There are going to be hundreds of millions of pounds of consequentials as a result of the pay disputes being resolved in other parts of the UK. That is money that is available to the Scottish Government in order to spend how it wishes. Some of it, of course, can be used - all of it, if they choose - around resolving some of these disputes.

"What doesn't resolve a dispute is if you wash your hands of it, step back and wait for something to resolve.

"What they've got to urgently do is similar to what [UK health secretary] Wes Streeting did with the junior doctors, is be grown-ups, get round the table with the trade unions, with the local authorities, with Cosla as the umbrella body, thrash out a deal and get this resolved."

Unison, the largest local government union, confirmed staff in 13 council areas will join the protest, while the GMB and Unite trade unions plan strikes in 18 areas.

The councils due to be hit include Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries & Galloway, East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire and Fife. Inverclyde, Midlothian, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Perth & Kinross, Stirling, West Lothian, Aberdeenshire, East Dunbartonshire, Falkirk, Highland, Orkney Islands, Renfrewshire and Angus will also all be affected by the strikes.

Discussions involving Cosla, the unions and finance secretary Shona Robison took place on Tuesday, but failed to reach a breakthrough.