Devastating Dundee cuts can be avoided if councillors fight austerity

Jim McFarlane, Dundee City UNISON branch secretary

Dundee City Council will set their budget facing a £24 million shortfall this year. The funding provided to local councils has again been slashed the SNP led Scottish Government. 

This further cut of £24 million is on top of the near £180 million pounds cut over the last 12 years. Thousands of jobs have already been lost and services cut to the bone. 

The biggest cut proposed this year is to cut 32 teacher’s jobs in Dundee School. The city faces many challenges in closing the Educational Attainment Gap. Levels of poverty and deprivation in parts of the city are amongst the highest in Scotland. Further cuts can only make a bad situation worse. 

There will be further job cuts across all departments through the non-filling of vacant posts as well as delays in recruiting to other posts. This will inevitably add to the heavy workloads and stress that many frontline council workers face. 

It is already hard to fill posts in jobs such as social care, school support and early years. Some of that is due to the chronic low pay issues in these roles as well as the additional challenges faced since the covid pandemic. 

More and more workers are deciding they have had enough and don’t get paid enough to work in those roles. The council are also looking to raid over £1 million pounds from the Local Government Pension Fund. While there will be no detriment to pension benefits due nevertheless that is a concern to council workers. 

Increased charges for some services are to be imposed while the council are also looking to use over £6.6 million of Covid reserves they have accumulated but not used. 

The detail has not yet been released but there are also clear threats to close or reduce services such as libraries, community centres and other leisure facilities. 

The SNP council clearly also show how much they value council workers by budgeting for a measly 3% pay rise for the coming year. A slap in the face again and what will in effect be a further pay cut if that was accepted or imposed. 

Council workers showed in September of last year that they have had enough of pay rises below the rate of inflation. The magnificent and inspiring strike by tens of thousands of school support staff and early years workers forced the employers to increase pay awards. 

Many lessons were learned by a new generation of workers taking strike action, demonstrating and building lively militant picket lines at every school campus in the city. Thousands of new members were recruited and workplace strength has been built with a new group of workplace reps being recruited and organised. They are ready to take action again with the aim of involving even wider number of council workers. 

The cuts proposed will provoke struggles in workplace over workloads and also in the wider community as already struggling communities face the reality of the SNP council meekly implementing cuts that are rooted in the austerity coming from both the governments at Holyrood and Westminster. 

The cumulative cuts of around £200 million over the years is a robbery against the people of the city. Politicians of all the parties represented in the council chamber, Scottish Parliament and Westminster are culpable. 

They have shown no resistance to the continued war against local government. They claim they have no alternative. Yet time and time again trade unionists and socialists have pointed the way forward. Refuse to make the cuts, set a no cuts budget and join with the trade unions and local communities to fight for the funding that is needed. 

We need politicians who act rather than talk. If they are not prepared to act in our interests then they need removed and replaced with Councillors, MSPs and MPs who will do that. 

We urgently need a new workers’ party that unites trade unionists and socialists armed with a socialist programme. 

More and more trade unionists are reaching the conclusions that the existing political parties have little real differences. Only mass struggle and a genuine political alternative can defeat them.