WORKERS have served notice to Glasgow City Council of a strike over the equal pay scandal which would hit schools, nurseries, home care, cleaning and catering services in the city.
Over 8,000 workers in Glasgow City Council (GCC) will take strike action later this month over a failure by their employer to progress negotiations for the settlement of second wave equal pay claims.
GMB and Unison submitted a statutory notice for industrial action on GCC Wednesday confirming forty-eight hours of strike action on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 October.
GMB Scotland organiser Rhea Wolfson said: “Our members are striking against decades of unresolved sex discrimination and because they can see the same roadblocks to justice being put in place by council officials yet again.
"Our members have demonstrated, they have marched and they will bring this City to a standstill in their fight to get their employer to progress negotiations over the settlement of their equal pay claims.
"They have been robbed of hundreds of millions, if not billions of pounds – no one should be surprised that we are on the brink of strike action.”
READ MORE: Unions condemned for "putting vulnerable at risk" over Glasgow equal pay strike
Mary Dawson, Glasgow chairman of the Unison union, added: “Our members are now standing up and fighting back. Low paid workers, mostly women who have had enough.
"We have given the council ten months to make progress on addressing the historical discrimination suffered by these workers.
"However, the council has agreed nothing, offered nothing and all we have had are meetings about meetings and talks about talks. It’s time for some action."
A Unison ballot of nearly 3,000 school learning support workers, school administration workers, early years nursery workers and other education staff returned a 90% vote to take strike action over the council’s failure to reach agreement on a long standing equal pay dispute.
In a second ballot of over 2,000 home carers, school cleaners, catering workers and other staff employed by Cordia 99% voted to strike.
It followed a ballot of GMB Scotland members including care workers, school cleaners and caterers employed by council service provider Cordia which returned an "overwhelming" 98 per cent support for strike action.
GMB Scotland represented about 2,000 of an estimated 10,000 women who have been pursuing equal pay claims against for more than ten years.
The city council has previously said they were preparing to reach a negotiated settlement and condemned the strike plan saying it was "putting vulnerable people at risk".
The GMB had previously claimed that the council has cost taxpayers £50,000 an hour by failing to settle the dispute.
They believe the bill for 'discriminating' against the women over more than a decade could top £500 million, a claim the council said was not accurate.
But Scotland's public spending watchdog warned of Glasgow's "unprecedented" financial challenge and Susan Aitken, the leader of Glasgow City Council admits that payouts to the female workers would have a "very significant impact on the council" for many years to come.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel