Balancing act needed if council wages are to rise

AFTER the minimum wage comes a "living wage" that the City of Glasgow Council wants the Scottish Government to adopt for all public sector workers in Scotland. But can Glasgow – or Scotland – afford it? Glasgow introduced the scheme last March to guarantee its staff an hourly rate of £7.

The basic wage of the council's lowest-paid workers rose from 12,200 to 13,340 and some 681 benefitted. The move cost the local authority 1.2 million, but it believes that figure will be recouped via disciplinary measures against staff with poor attendance records. According to the unions, there are some 700,000 workers across Scotland, many of them women, who earn less than the proposed rate.

Given the intensifying pressure on budgets, and that labour costs are by far the largest item in local authority outgoings, such a move seems ill-timed, and would open councils to the charge that services would be put in jeopardy in order to raise the pay of council staff.

It would need to be accompanied by accelerated voluntary redundancy programmes to ensure that the wage bill does not get out of hand. The fact that other councils have considered the proposal and rejected it because of the extra cost when budgets are being squeezed suggests Glasgow leader Stephen Purcell will have an uphill battle getting the scheme adopted across the country. However, in some councils it may be used as the quid pro quo to secure agreement for headcount reduction.