Scottish trade unions have denied that a deal has been struck with the Scottish Government and local councils to protect public sector jobs in return for pay constraint.
The move followed reports that an agreement was close, but unions seeking more assurances over the deal accused the Scottish Government of “jumping the gun”.
Although a framework agreement was endorsed by council leaders last Friday after a series of talks between the Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) and unions, the deal only commits local councils to doing all they can to protect jobs. It does not rule out compulsory redundancies, which appears to be a sticking point. If agreement is reached, the unions would agree to be flexible in regard to working practices in order to generate “significant paybill savings”.
But Grahame Smith, general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, told the Press Association: “The Scottish Government is guilty of jumping the gun and it is not helpful to have discussions of this nature played out in the media. The STUC has been open at all stages to reaching an understanding on no compulsory redundancies but, as things stand, we are not ‘close’ to agreement.”
He added that it was “far from clear” that the Government and Cosla were “on the same page, particularly in relation to their interpretation of what it means to maintain headcount and the extent to which no compulsory redundancies are actually guaranteed”.
Another problem was the way that public sector employers were conducting ongoing negotiations did not appear to match their stated objectives. “This makes it difficult to see how the trust needed to make any agreement work can be achieved,” Smith said.
A spokesman from Cosla, on the other hand, said that, while councils were working towards the goal of preventing compulsory redundancies, the framework agreement did not guarantee there would be none.
“Obviously the option for compulsory redundancy is always a last resort and no council wants to see this happen. However, the bottom line is that Scotland’s councils cannot say that there will be no compulsory redundancies because the hard financial facts are that there is not enough money in the system to keep staffing at current levels,” he added.
