Funding for Scots services 'threatened' by union's fair work concerns

The flagship policy is intended to ensure workers are treated with respect and fairness but the union has now written to ministers and public sector organisations highlighting the failure to deliver swift and fair negotiations on pay.

Letters warning GMB Scotland will not endorse employers’ grant applications, involving millions of pounds of crucial funding, have been sent to Scotland’s 32 local authorities, Scottish Water, NHS Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service.

GMB Scotland says every penny of funding, including block grants, is in question because unions must agree organisations meet the Fair Work First rules before getting any public money and there is a refusal to do so.

READ MORE: Scotland schools: Strike closures loom after pay dispute impasse

According to Scottish Government guidance, for the awarding of public sector grants and public contracts given on or after July 1, the default position is that Fair Work First criteria for paying at least the real Living Wage and providing "appropriate channels for effective workers' voice" will be mandatory.

The union, which represents tens of thousands across several public sector bodies, including over 20,000 people working in local government, says that protracted pay negotiations with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the national association of Scottish councils, dragged on for most of the year as council leaders were accused of ducking responsibility to ensure talks were urgent and effective.

The GMB union is one of three striking at Scottish Water where managers are accused of triggering a rolling programme of industrial action after being accused of "riding roughshod" over accepted procedures for negotiating pay.

The unions have accused the publicly-owned firm of acting like a “rogue employer” after combining an annual pay offer with a restructuring of salaries and grades, which, they say, will limit the wages of many lower-paid workers in the years ahead.

And the union says that in its members concerns around workload and health safety in the NHS and Scottish Ambulance Service have been "repeatedly ignored with changes being rammed through without meaningful consultation". They say within the ambulance service industrial relations "hang by a thread".

But the Scottish Government says that the issues raised by the union "conflate provision of an effective voice with wider concerns about the manner in which public sector employers are engaging with pay talks".

And COSLA say that they disagree with the union position - saying that grants delivering vital services will not be a risk.

Keir Greenaway, GMB Scotland's senior organiser in public services, has now written to the major public service employers, including councils and Scottish Water, warning recent this year’s negotiations have been needlessly frustrating and protracted.

He wrote that this means the “effective voice” of workers demanded by the Fair Work First rules has been "muted" and said that GMB will not sign the necessary documents for organisations to access public money.

He added: “We will not be signing any statements confirming your council’s adherence to the Scottish Government’s Fair Work First criteria.

“The main reason is the failure of all Scottish councils to meet the ‘effective voice’ criteria, a failure exemplified in recent COSLA pay talks.”

The Scottish Government’s Fair Work First rules came into force in July and makes grants of public money dependent on employees delivering fair and diverse workplaces.

The union says that one condition – that workers have an “effective voice” – means public funding may be refused if there is no “written confirmation from both management and trade union representatives that networks or a forum exists, meets regularly, supports open dialogue and is action focussed.”

Mr Greenaway added: “It is impossible to look at the pay negotiations  that have been conducted over the last two years and suggest council leaders or COSLA are meeting unions regularly, having open dialogue and are focussed on action. If that were true, the money would be in our members’ pockets already.

“If these meetings had been focussed on action, the pay rise would have been in their bank months ago.

“The reality of these pay talks is that Scotland’s local authorities do everything possible to avoid meeting unions regularly, refuse to enter into dialogue, open or otherwise, and, despite our best efforts, are focussed on inaction as the months drag on.”

He has also written detailing GMB Scotland’s refusal to confirm councils are meeting those conditions to Neil Gray, the Scottish Government secretary for fair work, and to call for the Scottish Government to draw clear lines in the first major test of the new workplace rules.

The union said that if funding is released without GMB Scotland’s signing of the Fair Work statement, it will set a "disappointing precedent and the conditionalities will be proven to be utterly meaningless four months after their implementation".

GMB Scotland wants a root and branch review of how pay talks with COSLA are conducted to start within a month to ensure negotiations take place at pace.

It says the unions must be involved in the review, which should also consider the role of council leaders and government ministers in the negotiation process.

Other measures to bolster the work of unions reps in local authorities, including easing contact with new staff members, have also been requested by the GMB before it will confirm council workers have “an effective voice.”

According to the Scottish Government's Fair Work First guidance in awards, the "default position" is that all grant recipients awarded a grant on or after July 1 will be "required to pay at least the real Living Wage and provide appropriate channels for effective workers' voice as a minimum standard".

All organisations with a workforce have to be able to demonstrate, before they can access a grant, that all workers employed within that organisation have access to "effective voice channels, including agency workers".

It says that a voice has to exist at both "collective and individual levels and organisations will be expected to show how genuine and effective" that voice is.

It goes on: "The Scottish Government or other relevant funder may apply flexibility to recognise the different forms of voice that are appropriate for different organisations."

Organisations who are accessing grant funding are asked by the Scottish Government to include a short statement on their own website highlighting their commitment to advancing the Fair Work First criteria, including "effective voice conditions".

The statement should be agreed jointly by the employer and an appropriate workplace representative.

The guidance says that this representative should be from the relevant trade union or unions where one or more is recognised.

As part of the grant application process, applicants are also expected to provide a statement verifying their Fair Work First commitment and confirming it has been developed in agreement with the workforce.

The guidance says the representative providing confirmation should be from the relevant trade union or unions where one or more is recognised.

"A grant application cannot be progressed without such a statement being provided to the grant maker/funder," the guidance states.

It comes as the Accounts Commission public spending watchdog has said the public should be "very worried" about the scale of the financial challenges facing councils.

The Scottish Government provides a block sum to local authorities known as the General Resource Grant that makes up around 85% of their net revenue expenditure, with the remainder coming mostly from local taxation, for instance council tax.

In 2023/24, the total amount of the grant was 8.835bn in 2023/24, up by nearly £105m from 2022/23.

The Scottish Government also provide specific revenue grants which is ringfenced funding for identified policies. In 2021/22 that amounted to £776m and was targeted mostly for early learning and childcare expansion, a pupil equity fund and criminal justice social work. The sum has for 2023/24 remained at £776m.

Councils also receive a general capital grant, to buy buildings, land and equipment or to make improvements, to the tune of £689.9m in 2023/24. Specific capital grants amounted to £123.8m in 2023/24 The Scottish Government and other agencies provide additional grant support to support a wide range of services.

In July, the Scottish Government launched a new funding scheme offering up to £20 million in grants to support local authorities, universities and arm’s-length external organisations to decarbonise their buildings.

The new scheme is intended to increase the number of public sector organisations taking forward heat decarbonisation measures in their buildings.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: The Scottish Government is supportive of strong trade unions, of collective bargaining and the right to strike. However, the verification statement on workers having an effective voice is not concerned with wider industrial relations issues within the grant recipient organisation. Such matters should be dealt with separately and not become an obstacle in the grant application and award process.

“The issues raised by GMB conflate provision of an effective voice with wider concerns about the manner in which public sector employers are engaging with pay talks. This goes beyond the requirements in the guidance and is not within the spirit of the Fair Work First approach nor the collective efforts to drive forward fair work in Scotland.”

A COSLA spokesman said: “We can confirm that these letters have been received by council leaders and we disagree with their content. We are pleased that the cabinet secretary has confirmed that he concurs with this and that grants delivering vital services are not at risk.

“Through union recognition in all our councils the ‘effective voice’ Fair Work condition is met, which is the condition in the grants from Scottish Government. This is a totally separate issue to the pay negotiations and we are clear that Scottish councils support all aspects of Fair Work in our workplaces and for our workers.”