Two strikes today and one tomorrow
published this on 10:18 am, Tuesday, 23rd September, 2008Local Government| News | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
Today (Tuesday 23d September) sees two strikes. One, a pay-related strike by Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union workers in the Scottish Courts service, the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal service, will see some courts closed and some cases delayed. This strike will be followed by a ban on overtime that will also see some court cases delayed through slower preparation of necessary papers. BREAKING NEWS (2.40pm) Crown Office staff are said now to have been received a higher offer.
The second strike today, over changes to shift patterns, will see a number of Royal Mail engineers and security staff walk out. There is a picket line outside a major Royal Mail site in Glasgow, and 800 members of the Communication and Workers Union are to take part in the action across the UK. Postal services will experience disruption.
Tomorrow (Wednesday 24th September) will see the next round of the pay-related council workers strike across Scotland. Their 24-hour walk-out last month saw schools and school hostels closed, ferries cancelled, rubbish uncollected and libraries and other community facilities shut down right across Argyll and its islands. All three unions representing staff working for Scottish local authorities, Unite, Unision and GMB, are involved in tomorriow’s action.
At issue here is a three-year pay offer tied at 2.5%, already below inflation and therefore unacceptable to the unions. The local authorities are themselves tied to offering no more than 2% from public funds. Any settlement above 2% will have to be met by internal accounting and the local authorities say that their budgets simply cannot allow them to deploy more than 0.5% towards the current offer. Their move has been a reduction from three to one year for the duration of the offered 2.5%. The unions are asking for 5%.
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