Two-year pay deal on offer for Scots council workers

A TWO-YEAR pay deal will provide certainty for hundreds of thousands of council workers, local authority leaders have said.

Council chiefs have offered to increase workers wages by 1 per cent both this year and next. Picture: TSPL

Council chiefs have offered to increase workers’ wages by 1 per cent both this year and next.

Bill Hendry, human resources spokesman for local government body Cosla, said the two-year deal would provide “certainty over pay for this year, and perhaps more crucially, for next year” for approximately 250,000 local authority workers.

Council staff, who have previously had their wages frozen, had already been offered a 1 per cent increase for 2013-14 – though this has not yet been accepted by all the unions.

Now, local authority leaders are hoping the promise of a further 1 per cent rise in 2014-15, as well as their commitment to match the new level for the living wage when it is announced in November, will help secure the deal.

Mr Hendry said that no other part of the public sector had “signed up to helping the lowest-paid on this scale”.

Alex McLuckie, of the GMB union, said they would consult with members on the offer, but added the pay rises proposed were below the rate of inflation.