Local Government Pay Ballot – What you need to know
UNISON member’s entitled to pay awards negotiated by the Scottish Joint Council (SJC) for Local Government Employees have the right to vote in UNISON’s local government pay ballot. You will receive an email from 12 April.
Vote to REJECT the pay offer
Vote to take industrial action up to strike action
Ballot closes 28 April
The pay offer
Flat rate payment of £800 (this will be applied to SJC set hourly rates based on a 37 hour working week giving an underpinning minimum rate of pay of £9.75 per hour) for all employees earning up to £25,000;
2% uplift for those earning £25,000 to £40,000; and
1% rise for those earning up to £80,000 with a cap of £800; and
All nationally negotiated allowances, not including First Aid allowance, uplifted by 2%.
Why UNISON recommend vote REJECT and vote for industrial action
The offer falls far short of the flat rate or % increase outlined in our claim and far short of that being offered to other public sector workers.
The current offer does not do enough for the lowest paid – 55% of Local Government workers earn below £25k per year.
The offer contains no provision for restoring pay levels to pre-austerity levels.
The offer contains no provisions to pay the registration fees of workers who are required to maintain a regulatory registration to undertake their role or any other costs associated with undertaking their role.
The offer contains no commitment to explore a no-detriment reduction in the working week or any other measure to address the increased demands placed on our members or their ability to maintain a work-life balance.
Let’s get back around the table
The only way to get the employer back round the negotiating table is for you to use your vote, reject this offer and demonstrate your willingness to take industrial action up to and including strike action in pursuit of our full pay claim.
How did we get here
Your pay implementation date is normally the 1st April. The Joint Trade Union’s submitted our pay claim to COSLA on the 16th December.
However, the offer that the employer’s organisation has come back with falls short of the pay claim submitted by the Joint Trades Unions in December and far short of the offer put to other public sector workers
The employer has not engaged in meaningful negotiations with the Trade Unions. The employers offer was made some three months after our claim was submitted and with insufficient time to negotiate in advance of the pay implementation date
How to vote
This is a consultative ballot and is only being run digitally. You should receive an email. Emails will be issued from 12 April. They will not all arrive at the same time. Please keep checking your spam/junk folder.
If you do not receive and email you can still vote using this link: https://unison.tfaforms.net/190 You will need your UNISON membership number, name and date of birth to vote this way.
If you have any other problems please contact UNISON direct 0800 0857 857 or contact the Branch Office.
Johanna Baxter UNISON Scotland head of local government said:
“According to COSLA’s own figures 55% of the Scottish Local Government workforce earns less than £25k per annum – that’s over 100,000 workers earning significantly below the average wage of £32,000 per annum. The current offer does not address the issue of endemic low pay for these workers.
Without these workers going above and beyond to keep services running over the past year their colleagues in the NHS would have been left without childcare, our mortuaries would have been overwhelmed, our children would have been left without an education and our elderly would have been left without care. Yet to date they have received no reward or recognition of their efforts at all. It’s simply not good enough.”
Full details are available on the UNISON Scotland website
