Glasgow City Council is beginning to fire and rehire about 23,000 non-teaching staff under less favourable pay terms after union negotiations collapsed this week. The council, led by the Scottish National Party, is using the dismissals to enforce a new pay and grading system intended to address historical pay equality issues.
Unison, one of three unions representing the workers, refused to ballot its members on a council offer because the deal would cut pay for 11% of council employees. That refusal prompted the council to start issuing fire-and-rehire letters to all affected staff. The GMB and Unite unions were also involved in the failed negotiations.
Fire-and-rehire is a legal tactic where employers dismiss workers and offer them new contracts with different, typically worse, terms. Workers who reject the new contracts lose their jobs. The Glasgow exercise is described as one of the UK's largest such operations.
The council says the new pay system resolves long-standing pay equality problems. The source does not specify what those problems are, how long they have existed, or why they required dismissal and reappointment rather than negotiated wage adjustments. The source also does not detail which roles face cuts, by how much, or what the council's stated justification is for reducing pay in a pay equality overhaul.
Unison's decision not to ballot members suggests the union believes the offer fails to protect its members adequately. The source does not explain what alternative proposals the unions made or whether the council rejected specific counteroffers.
The timing of the move, following the breakdown of talks "once again" this week, indicates a pattern of negotiation failures. The source does not provide dates for previous negotiation attempts or explain what caused earlier discussions to fail.