Community Service Workers strike
By Richie Venton
They may be small in number, but the strike by 21 Glasgow council Community Service Workers has brought the service to a halt.
They have resorted to indefinite strike action since 6 January after months of fighting the council’s review of their jobs, which proposes increased hours of work, vastly increased responsibilities, but a pay cut of over £1,000 for many of them!
These workers deal with offenders in groups of five, carrying out community services as an alternative to prison. After the first week of their strike, the Labour council – which refuses to even speak to them let alone protect their pay through proper grading – has been forced to shut down the service to offenders for at least two weeks.
The strikers have toured round major council buildings, picketing them, winning warm moral and financial support from fellow-UNISON members, and they have lobbied the Labour councillors’ meetings. They have been boosted by support from other UNISON branches in Scotland, as well as the PCS civil service union national leadership.
Donald McNaughton, Community Service Superviser, told me the background and the strikers’ modest demands:
“It goes back to the Council’s Pay & Benefits Review, where they promised that anyone losing out financially would get training and be promoted, that there’d be a Review and nobody would lose money.
UNISON and Community Service Workers fully participated in this Review, only to be told before Xmas that we would have an increased working week, with compulsory Sundays, and increased duties and responsibilities.
Up to now we worked four days over seven, a 32 hour week; got enhancements for working Saturdays and Sundays; and got £1,400 for driving council vehicles.
Now they want us to drive as part of our normal duties (without the payment), work compulsory Sundays, find placements for offenders, train them, assess their employability – all on top of our normal duties. For that we are to go on Grade PCS4, which still leaves us in detriment on pay.
For months we protested by sticking to our job roles, refusing to drive council vehicles or train offenders. The council hired black hackneys to ship the boys round the city, and simply refused to negotiate with us. So we had no alternative but to withdraw our labour.
We’re disgusted at the council, and its leader Stephen Purcell, for breaking their promises, and refusing to talk to us, when there are only 21 of us.
We work with squads of offenders. The separate workers who deal with individual placements of offenders have been upgraded to PCS5. That’s all we are asking for, the same grade 5 to prevent pay cuts.
We demand that the Council recognise we do a decent job, to respect us and talk to us. It’s not asking much for them to come and explain why they have broken their written promises to the unions in 2007.
An un-named council spokesman has said we are getting paid for what we do. That’s an insult.
They’re finding all this money for the Commonwealth Games. They are asking us to help clean up the city to make it attractive to tourists, yet they won’t pay us a fair rate or even negotiate.
We’re getting great support from colleagues in UNISON and other unions, moral and financial, and want to thank them for their support.”