Dates confirmed for bin strikes as workers to walk out across Scotland
July 31, 2024
Dates confirmed for bin strikes as workers to walk out across Scotland
by backupJM
12 comments
>Unison, Unite and GMB members from 18 local authorities will take part in the action from August 14 until August 22.
>It comes after workers rejected the latest 3.2% pay offer from councils, claiming it failed to match the escalating cost of living.
I wonder if the public pay rises announced by Reeves will lead to additional barnett consequentials that would make it possible to put forward a better offer?
Areas impacted:
– Aberdeen City Council
– Aberdeenshire Council
– Angus Council
– City of Edinburgh Council
– Dumfries & Galloway Council
– Dundee City Council
– East Ayrshire Council
– East Renfrewshire Council
– Falkirk Council
– Fife Council
– Glasgow City Council
– Inverclyde Council
– North Ayrshire Council
– North Lanarkshire Council
– Renfrewshire Council
– South Ayrshire Council
– The Highland Council
– West Lothian Council
Dammit that’s when my blue bins meant to get picked up. I forgot to put it out last time as I was ill so it’s fucking packed aswell.
Of course the first reaction will be “the place will Be a mess”. Rather than “hmmm. Maybe I can cut down on the waste I produce? Maybe I can pick up litter in my immediate area?”
It’s likely to have a longer lasting impact this time around, compared to 2022.
The reason for this is that last time around, they didn’t ballot all the cleansing services in some councils, such as the one I work for, where the bin uplifts and street cleansing are different departments. In that situation, the street cleansing still went out to pick litter and empty street bins, but there was no uplifting of the skip that they empty their vans into, so after a while, there was a big pile of smelly bags that had to be loaded by tractor&bucket into the skips when the skip lorries became available again.
This time, street cleansing have been balloted, and will be on strike, so no street bins or street litter picking will happen.
In addition to this, I’ve heard there will not be any overtime available to clear the backlog (apparently there’s no budget available for this – a lot of the overtime budget has already been spent this year on blitzing a few areas to try and patch holes in the workforce)
So the bin lorries will not be doing extra shifts, the backlog will be expected to be cleared in normal hours (usually the bins finish an hour or so ahead of their nominal finish times due to skipping lunch, not taking breaks etc, which is one of the things that is common practice despite being against rules, because otherwise the rounds cannot be completed in the allocated time – e.g. the bin lorries are supposed to return to the depot at lunchtime, good luck doing that when your allocated route is 10 miles from the depot).
So the uncollected bins are likely to take a while to get back on schedule.
Here we go, Autumn of strikes, school workers voting this week. Swinney needs to pay up or Scotland is going to go down the drain in the next few months.
The amount o folk that will just blindly blame this on ScotGov is frustrating
The average joe won’t consider that:-
a) it’s the individual councils that deal with pay deals, not ScotGov
b) ScotGov doesn’t get to decide how much of a budget it gets and thus how much it can give to councils, UK Gov is the Government with all the economic levers of any real use here – and the UK Gov has already ripped £100million off of ScotGovs budget that was essentially on its way through Barnett via the winter heating payment that Labour have now cancelled – something not even the Tories did
c) all three unions calling for the strikes are affiliated with the UK Labour Party which have previous for turning the screw on the SNP ScotGov (Labour were by far the most strict with the Smith Commission devolved powers decision)
Edit to add:- this has went from 17 upvotes to 4 downvotes in about 20 minutes – that doesn’t scream ‘targeted’ at all
Downvoting literal facts, not an opinion, means people are less informed and that’s a massive part of how the uk in is the fucking state it is
Scottish MPs gave themselves a pay rise of 6.7%.
Scottish teachers received a pay rise of 14% over 3 years.
Scottish GPs received 17.5% pay rise over 2 years.
NHS received a minimum of 6.5% last year with negotiations for this year underway.
CoSLA refused to increase their offer of 3.2% for local government workers and also refused an offer from all the unions to lobby ScotGov for additional funding. The last wage rises came from existing council budgets, NOT from ScotGov.
Thank goodness my general waste bin gets picked up on the 12th. Will miss out on a glass and plastic pick up so not a real problem in terms of my house but I’m sure others will miss out and the mess elsewhere is going to be even more terrible
😭Totally selfish tears here. My (61y/o) first trip to Europe coming up on August 23rd and my family are taking a long dreamed of trip to Scotland. Your country is so beautiful. I hope I still get to see all that beauty. 🙏
Solidarity!
Can someone explain why 18 and not 32 councils affected?
12 comments
>Unison, Unite and GMB members from 18 local authorities will take part in the action from August 14 until August 22.
>It comes after workers rejected the latest 3.2% pay offer from councils, claiming it failed to match the escalating cost of living.
I wonder if the public pay rises announced by Reeves will lead to additional barnett consequentials that would make it possible to put forward a better offer?
Areas impacted:
– Aberdeen City Council
– Aberdeenshire Council
– Angus Council
– City of Edinburgh Council
– Dumfries & Galloway Council
– Dundee City Council
– East Ayrshire Council
– East Renfrewshire Council
– Falkirk Council
– Fife Council
– Glasgow City Council
– Inverclyde Council
– North Ayrshire Council
– North Lanarkshire Council
– Renfrewshire Council
– South Ayrshire Council
– The Highland Council
– West Lothian Council
Dammit that’s when my blue bins meant to get picked up. I forgot to put it out last time as I was ill so it’s fucking packed aswell.
Of course the first reaction will be “the place will
Be a mess”. Rather than “hmmm. Maybe I can cut down on the waste I produce? Maybe I can pick up litter in my immediate area?”
It’s likely to have a longer lasting impact this time around, compared to 2022.
The reason for this is that last time around, they didn’t ballot all the cleansing services in some councils, such as the one I work for, where the bin uplifts and street cleansing are different departments. In that situation, the street cleansing still went out to pick litter and empty street bins, but there was no uplifting of the skip that they empty their vans into, so after a while, there was a big pile of smelly bags that had to be loaded by tractor&bucket into the skips when the skip lorries became available again.
This time, street cleansing have been balloted, and will be on strike, so no street bins or street litter picking will happen.
In addition to this, I’ve heard there will not be any overtime available to clear the backlog (apparently there’s no budget available for this – a lot of the overtime budget has already been spent this year on blitzing a few areas to try and patch holes in the workforce)
So the bin lorries will not be doing extra shifts, the backlog will be expected to be cleared in normal hours (usually the bins finish an hour or so ahead of their nominal finish times due to skipping lunch, not taking breaks etc, which is one of the things that is common practice despite being against rules, because otherwise the rounds cannot be completed in the allocated time – e.g. the bin lorries are supposed to return to the depot at lunchtime, good luck doing that when your allocated route is 10 miles from the depot).
So the uncollected bins are likely to take a while to get back on schedule.
Here we go, Autumn of strikes, school workers voting this week. Swinney needs to pay up or Scotland is going to go down the drain in the next few months.
The amount o folk that will just blindly blame this on ScotGov is frustrating
The average joe won’t consider that:-
a) it’s the individual councils that deal with pay deals, not ScotGov
b) ScotGov doesn’t get to decide how much of a budget it gets and thus how much it can give to councils, UK Gov is the Government with all the economic levers of any real use here – and the UK Gov has already ripped £100million off of ScotGovs budget that was essentially on its way through Barnett via the winter heating payment that Labour have now cancelled – something not even the Tories did
c) all three unions calling for the strikes are affiliated with the UK Labour Party which have previous for turning the screw on the SNP ScotGov (Labour were by far the most strict with the Smith Commission devolved powers decision)
Edit to add:- this has went from 17 upvotes to 4 downvotes in about 20 minutes – that doesn’t scream ‘targeted’ at all
Downvoting literal facts, not an opinion, means people are less informed and that’s a massive part of how the uk in is the fucking state it is
Scottish MPs gave themselves a pay rise of 6.7%.
Scottish teachers received a pay rise of 14% over 3 years.
Scottish GPs received 17.5% pay rise over 2 years.
NHS received a minimum of 6.5% last year with negotiations for this year underway.
CoSLA refused to increase their offer of 3.2% for local government workers and also refused an offer from all the unions to lobby ScotGov for additional funding. The last wage rises came from existing council budgets, NOT from ScotGov.
Thank goodness my general waste bin gets picked up on the 12th. Will miss out on a glass and plastic pick up so not a real problem in terms of my house but I’m sure others will miss out and the mess elsewhere is going to be even more terrible
😭Totally selfish tears here. My (61y/o) first trip to Europe coming up on August 23rd and my family are taking a long dreamed of trip to Scotland. Your country is so beautiful. I hope I still get to see all that beauty. 🙏
Solidarity!
Can someone explain why 18 and not 32 councils affected?
Everyone deserves more money