By Richard Johnstone | 1 May 2014
Trade union Unison has today urged council employers to enter into arbitration talks as the pay dispute in local government escalates.
The union, which has announced that it will ballot its members on strike action over the pay offer from the Local Government Association, said talks should now be held at conciliation service Acas. A second local government union, Unite, has also announced it would hold a ballot following the LGA’s 1% pay offer for most workers.
Heather Wakefield, head of local government at Unison, which represents 600,000 local government workers, said the LGA had already indicated it was not prepared to enter any arbitration talks.
‘The LGA has rightly acknowledged the hard work and incredible effort local government workers are making to keep services going under the strain of unprecedented cuts and almost 500,000 redundancies,’ Wakefield said.
‘But since 2010, our members have had a three-year freeze followed by a below inflation settlement in 2013 and the same in this year’s offer.
‘At the same time, local government reserves have risen to over £19bn. That means that councils have chosen to bank money, rather than reward the very people who are keeping their council services going – our members.’
She added that Unison, as well as other local government unions Unite and the GMB, were ready to enter further negotiations at any point.
In a letter to council chief executives last week, the LGA’s head of workforce Sarah Messenger said that the offer made by employers was final, and ‘represents the limit of affordability and there is no prospect of this offer being increased’.
‘It is for this reason that the employers have also agreed that they will not accept any request from the unions to refer the pay dispute to ACAS for arbitration,’ she added.
