School support staff who are members of UNISON Scotland, will take strike action for three days next week.
UNISON Scotland is the largest trade union representing council workers, including cleaners, caterers, janitors, school crossing patrol workers and classroom support assistants.
Of the 36 councils, schools across 26 will be impacted by the strike action on the 26, 27 and 28 September.
Many schools will be forced to close throughout this period as they will be unable to ensure student and staff safety.
This follows school closures across Scotland earlier this year when teachers took industrial action in response to a pay dispute.
This was ultimately resolved following several days of industrial action over an extended period of time, a settlement of a 7 per cent pay increase was agreed.
Concerns around the disruption to young people’s learning come amid the current concern over revelations of RAAC (Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete) , an unsafe building material being used in schools.
UNISON’s choice to strike was only made after careful consideration of these factors.
UNISON’s decision to strike comes after a pay dispute with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), the representative body for the voice of local government in Scotland.
Under the advice of Deputy First Minister Shona Robson, COSLA extended a revised pay offer on 21 September, in a final bid to prevent strikes and subsequent school closures.
The Scottish Government also made a further £80 million available to allow COSLA to improve the pay offer.
UNISON Scotland, however, claimed the revised offer was equivalent to an increase of only £0.01 per hour for the lowest-paid workers.
Accordingly, they rejected the offer.
Johanna Baxter, the UNISON head of local government, stated that the industrial action was a result of years of underfunding within the sector.
It was believed that the threat of further disruption to education would encourage COSLA to offer a more suitable wage increase to school and early years staff.
This seems to have partially worked, with smaller unions calling off strikes to allow members to consider the revised offer; GMB called off 10 strikes and Unite stopped 11 strikes from going forward.
Nevertheless, UNISON Scotland will proceed with strike action, with a demand for what they deem as suitable pay.
“Inside My Classroom” by knittymarie is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
