UNION leaders have warned Scots council leaders that frontline service cuts "won't be tolerated" after accepting a pay deal to end the dispute that threatened to shut schools and and waste disposal services.
Taxpayers were forced to foot a further £200m every year to fund the huge council staff pay rise.
Within days the Scottish Government said savings of £500m would have to be made in the following the pay awards.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney said the new pay agreements had led to a bill of £700m, which meant “taking money from elsewhere”.
All three main unions in dispute, Unison, Unite and GMB who suspended strikes after the offer was made earlier this month have said members have now voted to accept the offer.
Unite said that the proposed cuts to public services "will not be tolerated".
Union sources said the local authority group COSLA increased the pay pot from Scotland's 250,000 local authority workers from around £400m to £600m at the 11th hour allowing the lowest paid staff to get a pay increase of around 10 to 11% following the intervention of the First Minister.
The increase in funding raised questions about how the pay rise was able to be funded days after Nicola Sturgeon and the Deputy First Minister John Swinney insisted there was "no more money".
The dispute saw piles of rubbish build up in city centres as waste workers went on strike.
Council body COSLA backed a plan by 24 votes to 8 earlier this month which would give £2000 to the low paid and cap the cash given to more affluent staff.
The Scottish Government was originally only providing an extra £140m of funding on a recurring basis to support an original pay offer - while COSLA was to come up with the extra £260m.
The Scottish Government says it is now effectively providing an extra £120.6m additional capital annually to fund the increase in salaries. COSLA had initially offered workers two percent then 3.5 percent and then five percent – all rejected outright by Unite - before the revised offer on September 2 was tabled.
Wendy Dunsmore, Unite’s lead negotiator for local government, said: “The Scottish Government are already shamefully threatening to make £500m of cuts to public services, which we will not tolerate. The robbing Peter to pay Paul narrative being spun by government ministers that decent pay rises only come with another service in the public sector being slashed is dangerous and it will be fought inch by inch by Unite.
“Unite has delivered a pay package worth around £600m for around a quarter of a million local government workers. Let’s make no mistake about this: it was the strike action and resolve shown by Unite members which has secured a deal worth £2000 for the lowest paid workers who are predominately female.”
Flashback to waste strike that led to waste left on major streets across Scotland
Johanna Baxter, Unison Scotland's head of local government said: "The lesson the Scottish Government needs to take from this is that they need to fund local government, and the workers that serve our local communities, properly and Unison will continue to lead the campaign for investment in councils and for staff to get the pay, reward and recognition they deserve."
The pay deal came after councils told parents that schools and nurseries would be shutting from Tuesday as industrial action was due to spread to thousands of education staff in 13 council areas.
The dispute had already seen waste workers belonging to the all three unions on strike in 25 of Scotland's 32 local authorities.
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