Plans to fire and rehire thousands of Glasgow City Council staff on hold

Plans to fire and rehire thousands of staff at Glasgow City Council have been put on hold until the end of next week.

The council and unions are planning to get back around the table after negotiations over a new pay and grading structure broke down on Thursday.

The fallout comes as the local authority plans to implement a new pay and grading system after the previous one was found to discriminate mostly against female workers.

The proposals meant pay for most staff would stay the same or rise. However, around 11% would see their wages cut, with some by more than £10,000.

The council had said that in order to end the current pay arrangements, all non-teaching staff would be dismissed and rehired under new contracts, which would take effect from January 1.

But now, trade unions including Unison have agreed to start talks early next week after the fire-and-rehire proposals were put on hold.

STV News understands that will be likely be on Tuesday.

Colin Edgar, the council’s director of communication and governance, said the situation was “hellish”.

“Our grading scheme is discriminatory. It has to be done away with and replaced with a new scheme. There are two ways we can do that. We can do it through collective agreement with our trade unions or we can do it by dismissing and re-engaging,” he told STV News.

“Until very recently, we thought we had a deal with our trade unions. Two of them, Unite and GMB, were at the table with us. They wanted to do a deal and unfortunately at the last minute Unison, knowing what the implications of it would be, walked away. And that’s why we’re here today.”

Unison argued that it had not walked away and it will “ballot its members on an offer once discussions have concluded”.

Mr Edgar said: “We have to come back to the fundamentals, which is that our scheme discriminates against people.

“We’ve spent ten years now and three quarters of £1bn of taxpayers money in compensation for this. We need to do away with it, and unfortunately, there are only two ways to do away with it, and Unison has taken one of those ways off the table.”

Sylvia Haughney, Glasgow’s education convener at Unison said: “They can’t rob Peter to pay Pauline, and in fact the Paulines who are the equal pay big claimants, they’re facing detriment.

“These are low paid women who were out in these streets in 2018 in the big strike, and some of those women are facing detriment.

“We will go back round the tables, they need to go and find the money.

“They need to do the right thing and pay people properly.”

Unison Glasgow City branch secretary Chris Sermani said, “ We welcome that the council have paused fire and rehire and that we will recommence talks next week.

“But these discussions must be productive and based on increased funding to address the concerns we have outlined to the government today.”

Unison Scottish secretary Lilian Macer said, “We said all along that we will not be bullied into accepting a shoddy deal for council staff.

“It’s good news that workers are no longer threatened with fire and rehire, and we hope to make progress in more talks next week.”

Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth said: “I am pleased that Glasgow City Council has agreed to pause the process of dismissing staff so that all partners can get back around the table for intensive negotiations to focus on bringing a resolution to this dispute.

“Given the significance of this situation and the impact on staff, I wanted to bring all parties together to make clear that I expect negotiations between the council and unions to continue so that a collective agreement can be reached and bring an end to discriminatory pay practices.

“My expectation is that all parties act in line with the principles of fair work and continue to exhaust all avenues for collective agreement. The Scottish Government opposes the inappropriate use of ‘fire and rehire’ and our position is that such a practice does not align with the principles and expected practice of fair work.”