Scottish council strikes averted as unions back pay offer

All three major council unions have accepted a two-year pay deal without taking industrial action for the first time in three years.

Unite and GMB voted in favour of the offer for council staff, which would see them get a rise of 4% this year and 3.5% in 2026/27.

The pay offer covers almost all council workers apart from teachers.

Unison – the biggest council union – also accepted the offer from Cosla earlier this week, lifting the threat of strikes.

The union, which represents more than 80,000 workers across the country, had launched a strike ballot earlier this year but it was superseded by the most recent offer.

GMB Scotland had also warned the Clyde Tunnel, one of Scotland’s most important road links, could close after control room workers voted to strike in May.

Members had overwhelmingly rejected the previous offer, but have now returned a 66% vote in favour of the two-year pay deal.

Keir Greenaway, GMB’s senior organiser in public service, said the ballot result showed the offer was acceptable but had not done enough for the lowest paid workers.

He said: “We argued and will continue to argue for pay offers to be a flat increase to the hourly rate of every council worker.

“A percentage increase means the highest-paid council staff will receive thousands of pounds more each year while frontline workers get pennies more each hour.

“This offer does not do enough for them and it does not do enough to reach a minimum wage of £15 an hour which ministers continue to insist is their ambition.”

Unite’s ballot returned a 77% vote in favour of accepting the offer.

Graham McNab, Unite’s lead negotiator for local government, said: “Scottish council workers have given their backing to a decent pay rise covering the next two years.

“We are pleased the negotiations were held in a far more productive way this year than in the past and this should set a benchmark for future years.”

Pay is negotiated at a national level between Cosla and the main unions, and any pay offer has to be affordable for all 32 councils.

Council staff in many parts of Scotland went on strike in 2022 and 2023 over pay.

In 2022, action led to rubbish piling up in the centre of Edinburgh during the festival while in 2023 there were widespread school closures because janitors were on strike.

Both disputes were only resolved after the Scottish government provided more money for councils.

Last year, council staff were awarded a pay rise to see off the threat of bin strikes even though the offer was rejected by Unison.

Unite and GMB accepted the pay offer – an increase of either 3.6% or £1,292.

But Unison argued more needed to be done to address what it described as the long-term decline in the value of council pay and mandated strike action.

This year 83% of Unison members voted to accept Cosla’s most recent pay offer.

The union’s local government committee chair Suzanne Gens said: “This pay deal is a crucial step in turning round cuts to council staff pay.

“It gives local government workers some financial security now they know their pay will be higher than inflation over the next couple of years.”

Cosla said the agreement would bring “a welcome period of stability and certainty” about pay for the workforce.

A spokesperson said: “Councils are now able to take forward work to get the pay increase of 7.64% over the two-year period into the pockets of our workforce.

“While the agreement will have come too late for most councils’ July pay runs we know that payroll teams locally will be working hard to implement the uplift and any backpay due in the next months.”

There will be relief all round that a two-year council pay deal has been accepted by members of all three big council unions.

The past few years have seen industrial action over pay – some of it massively disruptive.

Councils often had to ask the Scottish government for extra money to help resolve the disputes and improve the pay offer.

This year the mere threat of action led to a deal.

The two-year pay deal, the unions believe, helps restore the value of council workers salaries which have fallen in real terms over the years.

Unions will be pleased industrial action has been unnecessary – it is always the last resort.

Councils will be pleased too that there is no risk of services being disrupted.

And the Scottish government knows there is no possibility of a widespread council strike in the run up to next year’s Holyrood election.

But unions have longstanding concerns about the value of council salaries and the wages of the lowest paid. They will be looking for further progress in future pay rounds.