MUNICIPAL THUGGERY BY GLASGOW’S SNP AND GREEN COUNCILLORS!

By Richie Venton, SSP trade union organiser

Over 23,000 workers in Glasgow received emails from their employer on Thursday announcing they would be fired and rehired on conditions and wages dictated by their employer.

On this occasion, this corporate thuggery was not used by P&O Ferries – who notoriously sacked 600 workers by video – or the profiteers who own British Gas, who likewise wielded this weapon to slash wages. Nor the Birmingham Labour council, who fired bin drivers to rehire them on £8,000 less. No, these vicious bullyboy tactics – towards workers who in many cases have devoted 20-30 years’ service to local people – were deployed by elected SNP and Scottish Green Party councillors. Eternal shame on them!

Brutal, cynical timing

The timing was brutal and coldly calculated. Emails were sent to all non-teaching staff employed by the council at 20 minutes to 4 on Thursday afternoon, literally just before many workers finished up for Glasgow’s September Week bank holiday. Tactics straight from the playbook of the very worst employers in the private sector, whose senior management are taught on training courses to announce bad news at the end of a shift or before a holiday shutdown, to prevent collective opposition by trade unions.

Nor was this some knee-jerk decision arrived at this week. The threat of sacking workers en masse and then offering them the stark choice of signing up to a new contract dictated by the employer, or effectively resigning from their job, was embedded in the Pay and Grading package agreed on August 20 by all SNP and all Scottish Green councillors on Glasgow’s City Administrative Committee (CAC).

SSP warned of this bully-boy method

The Scottish Socialist Party were amongst the first to warn of this weapon and explain the cynical calculations behind the ruling councillors’ decisions. As wrote within hours of taking part in the massive, united protest of trade unionists from UNISON, GMB and UNITE outside the CAC meeting:

“It’s a bludgeon to bully workers, break the backs of the unions and impose worsened conditions. It’s a method Westminster’s Labour government promised to outlaw, but has not properly done, delaying reforms until January 2027, and then leaving loopholes whereby employers can still put this machine-gun to workers’ heads ‘in cases of genuine financial difficulty’. All of which may help explain why the SNP and Scottish Greens rammed through a partial Pay and Grading package, excluding more than 5,000 other council staff, conscious of these deadlines and get-out clauses.”

Hence the letters firing-an-rehiring being rushed out now, to meet the legal obligation of 90 days’ notice, before new laws hamper the council’s dictatorial methods on 1st January.

Workers’ unity wins concessions

It was the united fury and opposition of workers in all three unions which pressurised the council into conceding an extra £110 million towards back payments for those who suffered grotesque wage discrimination over 20 years since the ruling Labour councillors imposed systematic pay discrimination in 2006 – and squandered over £2.5m in court actions to block equal pay for women in the subsequent 10 years. Eternal shame on Labour!

However, concessions gained on backpay quite explicitly did absolutely nothing to tackle the pay cuts which 11% of the workforce, over 2,500 workers, will suffer from April 2028.

Of course, like all three unions, the SSP welcomes every extra pound squeezed out of the council in compensatory backpay. But what the City Council have done, endorsed by SNP and Scottish Green councillors, is bully and blackmail workers into accepting pay cuts of up to £11,500 to thousands of their colleagues, or else these concessions on compensation would be withdrawn.

That is outrageous, anti-worker, anti-trade union municipal thuggery. It needs to be resisted by a united workforce, including through strike action, based on the old adage that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.

Council working incredibly hard to divide-and-conquer!

Glasgow City Council chief executive Susanna Miller – whose annual salary, pension contributions and other benefits total up to £260,999 – emailed workers claiming she did so “regrettably”, adding “I understand this is upsetting. We have tried incredibly hard with your trade unions to avoid this.”

In fact, the council have tried incredibly hard to divide and conquer the unions, and split the workforce between those who have gained some pay increases (in many cases by very modest amounts) and the 2,500-plus paying the price of underfunding with absolute pay cuts.

Instead of genuine negotiations in good faith they held a gun to the heads of the unions, issuing the ultimatum that unless they immediately balloted members on acceptance of a package embracing pay cuts of £2-3000 for some of the lowest paid workers, and £11,500 for women working in the domestic abuse unit, whilst senior managers enjoy a pay hike of £26,000… unless the unions did the bosses’ bidding, their members would be fired-and-rehired on 1st January 2027.

When the council summonsed UNISON to a meeting on Thursday, having browbeaten the other two unions into publicly stating they would accede to the employers’ ultimatum, UNISON replied they needed time to consult members but would meet them later that day.

Vitriolic attacks on UNISON branch

UNISON’s willingness to negotiate – but without being tied hand-and-foot into accepting a shoddy, pay-slashing deal prior to the use of fire-and-rehire being made (mostly) illegal in January, emphasising they would ballot members when talks had been exhausted – has been distorted into a vicious propaganda onslaught against the UNISON branch, which has by far the biggest council worker membership of the three unions.

The council’s communications director, Colin Edgar, declared “It beggars belief that UNISON would betray their own members in this way.”

Instead of quoting that approvingly and seeking to poach members, as at least some individuals in the GMB have done, workers need a united joint trade union leadership responding with unified strikes by all three unions to halt this atrocity against workers’ rights. And a continued struggle for additional funds to level up, not level down; to win both full compensation for wage discrimination and an equality-proofed Pay and Grading system that does not remove a penny from a single worker’s wage.

United strikes by all unions

The use of the terror tactic of fire-and-rehire to bludgeon workers into accepting pay cuts, and the accompanying vitriol against a union which refused to capitulate to such municipal thuggery, should lead to what UNITE industrial officer, Graham McNabb, has stated:

“Glasgow City Council must remove direct threats to our membership in its proposed Pay and Grading, whether it is through cuts to terms and conditions, or the scandalous threat of fire-and-rehire tactics. If they go down this reckless path, then it will be met with the full force of UNITE.”

Fight for the funding

The full force of the workers, with all three unions united, will be required to stop the bullies who’ve made the political choice of terrorising loyal workers with being sacked – rather than mount a mass campaign alongside them for the necessary funding from central government to guarantee equal pay, but without a single worker’s wage being slashed to balance the books.

SSP members inside and outside the council workforce will help build workers’ unity in action, across all unions, to force the bullies into scrapping their fire-and-rehire letters, and fight for the funds off Holyrood for equal pay, not a penny off a single worker’s wage, and full compensation for the Labour-initiated atrocity of wage discrimination. The struggle continues!

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