TEACHERS will demand refunds if they are forced to pay a new tax on workplace parking spaces, union leaders have said.
Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, said it would fight for “compensation” if the plans go ahead.
It comes after a last-minute Budget deal between the SNP and the Greens opened the door to councils being given the power to introduce a new levy.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Flanagan said: “If you’re talking about £500 a year being taken out of your salary that’s the kind of figure we’re fighting to try and get added in, as part of the compensation, so I think if there was a charge there, apart from some of the practical difficulties it creates around staffing our schools, I think it would simply work in to the next pay claim and people would be looking to recompense that. So I think there are significant issues with it.”
The Scottish Tories said providing such refunds would cost £1.7 million in Edinburgh, where there are 3,346 teachers, and £2.6m in Glasgow.
If all councils adopted the car park tax, the total annual fee would amount to £25.6 million, the party said.
Scottish Tory shadow finance secretary Murdo Fraser said: “We already knew this ill-judged SNP tax would be a disaster for workers and businesses right across Scotland.
“Now it seems it would be a nightmare for the taxpayer too. The SNP has been so short-sighted in its drive to raid people’s pay-packets, it hasn’t stopped to think of the consequences.
“Teaching unions have now confirmed that they would seek to address the £500-a-year charge within any future pay deals.
“That could lead to the taxpayer picking up millions in additional costs – the SNP government would be better not imposing the charge at all.
“There’s now more than enough evidence for the SNP government to ignore the Green extremists and drop this unwanted and unfair tax altogether.”
It is not clear which councils will adopt the controversial proposals, although Edinburgh is widely expected to be among the first.
Councils will be able to set their own rules, but similar proposals in Nottingham resulted in charges of more than £400 a year for those who drove to work.
The Scottish Government has already said NHS properties and hospitals will be excluded.
While the parking tax is charged to employers, they can choose to pass the costs on to staff.
The latest move comes as teachers continue to threaten industrial action, with unions demanding a 10% pay rise.
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 here