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from the gUARDIAN

Pay strike to hit council services as anger grows

Kevin Maguire
Wednesday July 17, 2002
The Guardian

The biggest strike by women in British history will disrupt local authority services today after union leaders accused "fat cat" council leaders of pocketing huge rises in allowances while vetoing pay rises for low paid staff.
Schools, leisure centres, libraries, toll bridges, ferries, street markets, council offices and public toilets face closure, with bins left unemptied and car parks declared free in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Threequarters of the 1.3m staff involved are women, and the walkout will be the largest for many years, the first ever joint national stoppage by blue and white collar workers after three unions rejected a 3% pay offer.

Union leaders contrasted the offer, worth 15p an hour for employees on the lowest rate, with a spate of rises for local authority employers, who are urging restraint on their employees.

The council income of Sir Albert Bore, leader of Birmingham, recently went up 148% to £62,594 after a 148% rise and the heads of Cardiff and Manchester were also singled out by union chiefs.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, the biggest of the three unions involved in today's action, said: "There is example after example of the way in which the higher paid in local government and the councillors are treating themselves and the rest of the workforce is being left to languish."

The GMB has accused the Labour government of seeking a confrontation and claimed spin doctor Jo Moore's infamous "bury bad news" email on September 11, in which she suggested sneaking out increases in councillors' expenses under cover of terrorist attacks, was part of a plot.

John Edmonds, GMB general secretary, said: "The greed of the new breed of town hall fat cats is matched only by their hypocrisy.

"How can Labour council leaders accept such staggering pay increases at the same time as demanding pay restraint from some of the lowest paid workers in the country?

"It's no wonder ministers went to such incredible lengths to stop news of these pay hikes leaking out."

Unison claimed the action would shut all except three of the 110 schools in Newcastle, as well as closing St Albans market for the first time in 100 years, and shutting the public toilets in Oxford.

A legal mix-up and the use of private contractors dashed union hopes, however, of shutting the Tyne tunnel and Dartford river crossings.

Local authority employers, who meet tomorrow to assess the impact of the action, said headline inflation had dipped to 1% and the police had settled for 3% under a deal linking their wages to private sector white collar earnings.

The unions' 6% claim was equivalent to £80 a year on council tax bills or the loss of 85,000 jobs.

Brian Baldwin, Labour leader of Wigan council and chairman of the council employers, said: "There is no good reason for the employers to improve their reasonable offer." He added that a 3% increase was all that the employers could afford.

· Tensions between trade unions and the government will deepen with a campaign to increase collective and individual rights at work, according to a confidential document due to be discussed by the TUC executive today.

The document, not to be published until after Tony Blair speaks to the TUC in September, proposes the biggest extension of union rights since Labour came to power in 1997.

The TUC paper will call for an unrestricted right to strike, streamlined guarantees for union recognition, and full protection from unfair dismissal as soon as a worker joins a company. In total the document will call for 33 new union and individual rights, most of which will be fiercely opposed by the CBI and other employers' organisations.