SCOTLAND: Childcare strike ends after 14 weeks

Alex Miller

Ninety-nine days after it started, the all-out strike by childcare workers (nursery nurses) came to an end on June 2, when childcare workers employed by Glasgow City Council voted by 542 votes to 98 to accept the council's offer of £9.83 an hour.

The Glasgow workers were the last in the country to end their strike, and made it clear that they did so only under duress. In the June 11 Scottish Socialist Voice, SSP national workplace organiser Richie Venton explained: "A letter was sent declaring the £9.83 offer to be final. Labour education convenor Steven Purcell told [union] members he had letters ready and waiting to be posted, threatening to sack every nursery nurse who refused to return to work by these terms. He boasted they could do this under anti-trade union laws, which remove protection from unfair dismissal after eight weeks on strike."

Venton described the strike as "the most tenacious fight since the miners' strike of 20 years ago". Although the settlement is short of the £10.13 an hour won by childcare workers in 16 of the 32 local councils in Scotland, the Glasgow workers remained defiant and vowed that Labour would pay for its betrayal.

The June 4 Glasgow Herald quoted Irene Lang, a childcare worker from Govan, as saying: "For a Labour-led council to threaten their workers with the sack is deplorable. It is a completely different workforce they will see coming back. If they think this is the end of it they are mistaken. We will be out in force with the fire-fighters, and others who have been betrayed, at every election, hitting Labour. There will be a backlash. I will be supporting the SSP — it has been fantastic in support on the picket lines."

From Green Left Weekly, June 23, 2004.

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From GLW issue 586