Solidarity – Scotland’s Socialist Movement today welcomed the climb down by New Labour led Glasgow City Council over their plans to enforce wage cuts on up to 4,500 city council workers from March 2009.

In a fantastic show of solidarity with their fellow workers 11,000 Unison members had voted overwhelmingly to strike for three days this week over the council’s threat to impose swingeing wage cuts.

Facing a massive strike from tomorrow that would have brought all council services to a halt in the city, council leader Stephen Purcell and the council leadership have now agreed that the March 2009 deadline be dropped. There is now a commitment that those who were to lose out in this process will maintain their earnings beyond March 2009 while the council’s process of retraining/service redesign takes place. This will be a massive relief to thousands of council workers, many of whom are low paid, and who faced the prospect of draconian cuts in pay and for some of losing their homes.

Solidarity MSP, Tommy Sheridan said:

“We welcome this victory. It is a marvellous example of working class solidarity forcing the employer to retreat. I pay tribute to the Unison members who have won a victory, not only for the Glasgow City Council workforce but for council workers across Scotland. This was a flawed review process from the start that was about taking money from already hard pressed and low paid workers to resolve longstanding unequal pay. Solidarity demands that the Scottish Executive and Scotland’s local authorities pay up to deliver genuine equal pay and abandon their strategy of robbing peter to paul.”