SNP unveil their anti-trade union colours at Glasgow hustings

Vote Scottish TUSC on May 5 in Glasgow

Scottish TUSC candidates Anne McAllister (Glasgow North East ward) and Matt Dobson (Glasgow East Centre ward) were invited to the Easterhouse Housing and Regeneration Alliance (EHRA) hustings in Blairtummock recently. 

We debated with the SNP, Labour, Tories, Greens, Alba and Libertarian candidates. Most of all we had a sharp debate with Ruairi Kelly, the North East ward SNP councillor and the team of East End councillors and supporters who turned up with him. During the hustings the SNP really revealed their anti-trade union outlook. 

A few days after the hustings the SNP published their manifesto commitments for the unions and workers in Glasgow, promising working together to mitigate the cost of living crisis. In addition they claimed that they would make the equal pay compensation payments in full as well as setting up a equal fair pay and grading system by 2023. 

But are these yet again empty promises? Judging by the conduct of the SNP reps at this hustings it may well be. 

Matt Dobson pointed to the fact that at the last EHRA council hustings in 2017 Kelly had promised all wage disputes with council workers would be solved by a new SNP administration.

We pointed out that the SNP Glasgow-led council had not done that, provoking the mass strike over equal pay in 2018. Only then did the SNP administration agree to a deal of over £500 million in compensation payments. 

They then during the Covid pandemic attempted to renege on the deal and exclude thousands of low paid workers from compensation and fair grading. 

Only another strike ballot in the run up to the current council elections forced the SNP to back down and reinstate the 2019 deal, plus now committing to further compensation payments in October and a new scheme by 2023. 

Matt said if the SNP administration dares to betray the workforce once more the city would be shut down by strike action again as the strike ballot is still live. 

SNP councillor Kelly in the hustings actually called the equal pay bill “a cut Glasgow’s residents would have to bear”. Clearly hinting that further SNP cuts in Glasgow will be blamed on the workers and trade unions for fighting for equal pay. 

He tried to blame the previous Labour administration (of course Matt and Anne made clear Glasgow Labour’s consistent cuts-making and anti-trade union record) Outside the hustings SNP supporters, in a debate with a Scottish TUSC candidate Lynda McEwan, said the trade unions were to blame and that Scottish TUSC represents the interests of the unions. Guilty as charged! And proud of it.

sharp exchanges

Further sharp exchanges took place over the legacy of COP26 and Anne and Matt’s call for above inflation pay rises, a reversal of cuts and real investment in the cleansing services with the creation of jobs. 

Matt stated support for the strike last November of the Glasgow cleansing workers and demanded a reinstatement of weekly bin collections and real maintenance of depots. 

Kelly responded that whether the bins were collected weekly was irrelevant as “it all ends up in landfill anyway and the point is to educate residents to recycle”. 

Kelly also responded to Anne’s call for an end to ALEO’s and for bringing Glasgow Life back into council control under public democratic oversight by saying Community Asset Transfers were a key way communities could have a say over running of services. 

Both Kelly and the Labour representative Maureen Burke, North East ward councillor, attacked Scottish TUSC as “financially irresponsible” for calling for no cuts/ needs  budgets. 

There was much tittering and mirth from SNP councillors and supporters when Anne gave the example of the socialist Liverpool city council that created jobs, homes and services in the 1980s. 

Kelly, in response to Matt, explaining TUSC councillors would defy commissioners sent in by the Scottish government to force cuts said: “I would not be prepared to lose my job and home and feed my children”. In response we said we would build a mass campaign involving the trade unions and the wider community to support such a stand by councillors, after all its better to break the law than break the poor. 

Anne and Matt summed up calling for working class people in Easterhouse and the wider city to prepare for a mass struggle against the cost of living crisis. People in the audience knew Anne from her role locally in the successful anti-bedroom tax campaign. 

Despite plenty of opportunities to fight  the SNP and Labour councillors have just passed on Tory austerity. 

Of course the SNP and Labour councillors even said they worked well together in their sum ups. As they do in the Blairite architecture of managing austerity including cuts budgets, ALEO’s, asset transfers and forcing community groups to compete for funding. 

The sharpness of debate at this hustings shows the capitalist establishment parties know the appeal of a fighting socialist approach in areas like Easterhouse, which saw the rise of our predecessor Scottish Militant Labour in the area in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the poll tax battle.

Not to mention the current role we play in council trade unions like the socialist-led Glasgow City Unison.