Unions promise battle over Edinburgh Council redundancies

TRADE union leaders have vowed to fight any attempt by the city council to make staff redundant. The full-time equivalent of 1200 staff could have to go as a result of this year's budget and city leaders said they may have to turn to compulsory redundancies.

But Kevin Duguid, lead negotiator for Unison in Edinburgh, called for a non-compulsory redundancy policy. He said: "There should be no reason why it can not be contained to voluntary redundancies. It is SNP policy and they have implemented it at other councils but not here."

Stephen MacGregor, convener of the Unite trade union, said: "The council, when talking about redundancies, says the service will not suffer because everyone else will do more work. That will not happen. For every redundancy, a service will be affected."