At the time of going to press, Glasgow City Council homeless caseworkers are meeting to decide their response to a management offer to try to settle their ten-week-old strike.
All the signs are that the strikers – members of UNISON Glasgow City Council branch – will reject the offer.
The strike was triggered after exhaustion of the internal grievance procedure, as management continued to refuse to regrade the 70 homeless caseworkers posts.
The caseworkers are underpaid by around £5,000 a year compared with similar frontline staff in other Council services, such as the elderly and addiction.
However inadequate the offer may be which has now been tabled, the fact that it has been tabled at all signals a retreat by management. Only a fortnight ago management’s line was that no offer would be made until the end of June at the earliest.
The offer also reflects the pressure faced by management and the Labour-controlled Council.
The Council has tried to maintain a skeleton emergency service, using non-Council staff (from charities and voluntary sector bodies) to assess people’s needs, and paying out money for temporary accommodation in B&B and hotels as the backlog of casework builds up.
And after Labour’s election wipeout in Scotland in the general election, even Glasgow City Council Labour councillors recognise that a prolonged industrial dispute with their own employees is another reason why they face the same fate in the 2017 council elections.
(Even though the record of councils where the SNP holds or shares power is not better than that of Labour-controlled Glasgow.)
The dispute also raises the question of who actually runs the Council, and its Social Work Department in particular. Social Work management is renowned for its anti-trade-union mentality, its provocative behaviour, and its willingness to go even further than the Council in taking on the trade unions.
While Social Work management and the Council have been forced to give ground, the strikers themselves go from strength to strength. Ten weeks on strike has not sapped their morale but strengthened it.
The strike has seen weekly mass meetings, pickets outside local Social Work offices and Social Work headquarters in the city centre, repeated lobbies of the City Chambers, demonstrations, public meetings, and speaking tours to other parts of the country.
Links have been built with Unite members on all-out strike at Dundee Ninewells Hospital in a similar dispute over regrading, Unite members in the homeless charity Shelter have raised funds for the strike, and money has also been donated by Doncaster UNISON members in Care UK who staged 90 days of strikes last year.
The dispute is run by a strike committee consisting of delegates elected from each picket line. It is all set to continue until the Council agrees in full to the strikers’ demand for regrading.
And with the UNISON national conference due to be held in Glasgow in mid-June and an STUC anti-austerity rally being held in Glasgow a week later, the strikers will have plenty of opportunity to reach a broader audience in support of their dispute.
Donations to strikers’ picket lines, or by cash or cheque (Glasgow City UNISON branch) to UNISON, 84 Bell Street, Glasgow G1 1LQ.
