Waste workers and their colleagues in local government are essential for keeping our communities clean and healthy. But our Councils in Scotland have had year-on-year funding cuts, so workers’ pay has suffered through below-inflation increases; and waste services have not received the investment needed to provide high quality services and achieve the government’s recycling targets.
- Local authorities have an essential role to play in driving forward action on climate change at a local level. There is a need for an enormous expansion of their capacity to implement key programmes for heat, transport and renewables generation.
- With the passing of the Circular Economy Act they will now also be expected to develop new infrastructure and services to reduce the amount of stuff which we use and throw away.
- The skills of the waste workers planning to take industrial action are essential to delivering real change in our economy to meet climate targets.
- It is vital that workers are well-paid and safe at work and that their employers can recruit and upskill an expanded workforce and invest in essential infrastructure.
For these reasons, the Just Transition Partnership supports the workers in this dispute. It calls on COSLA to meet the unions pay claim and on the government to increase funding to local government.