Stand against attacks on Aberdeen workers

Text of a Socialist Party Scotland leaflet

Proposed attacks on workers

In March 2024 Socialist Party Scotland stood against council cuts in Aberdeen and backed Trade Union protests. In a leaflet we wrote: “Socialist Party Scotland gives full support to the protest of Aberdeen trade unions and the Trade Union Council against a eye-watering cuts package from the SNP-Liberal Democrat Administration.”

A year on and nothing has changed with a fresh wave of proposals to make millions in cuts actively being considered ahead of the 2025/26 budget setting meeting on the 5th of March.

The proposals are to cut the working week from 37 hours to 35 hours for non-term time full time council staff. This loss of hours will come with a pay freeze – in reality a pay cut. For context a worker earning £15 an hour would lose out on a staggering £1,500 a year.

To Council directors earning hundreds of thousands a year that may seem like pocket change, but to those on the lowest pay that money may be going on energy bills, rent, or food. The anger among workers in the city is palpable.

With these attacks scandalously being framed as giving staff a ‘better work life balance’ not only will these cuts devastate those whose wages will be frozen but there will be a long-term impact on the delivery of vital public services.

A Tory councillor stated that these cuts will ‘only’ affect 3,000-4,000 individuals but that 200,000 people live in Aberdeen and a balanced approach is needed.

Firstly, that number is incorrect as those 4,000 people will have families they must care for. Secondly, under these proposals the Council would lose the equivalent of 187 full-time workers. This directly impacts on the council’s ability to deliver the vital public services which we all use every day. This decision therefore directly affects everyone living in Aberdeen.

Additionally, the council have yet to rule out the possibility of utilisting fire and rehire tactics to enforce this wage reduction plan. A decision which directly contravenes the SNP’s Fair Work First Guidance which states that: “the Scottish Government’s position is that such practice [fire and rehire] does not align with the criteria and expected practice of Fair Work”.

These proposals therefore flagrantly disregard the Scottish Government’s own Fair Work practices!

Fight back

On a positive note – unions in Aberdeen which represent the public sector, including GMB, Unison, and Unite, are considering possible strike action to fight back. Membership in these unions is swelling with council workers infuriated at the attack on their working conditions.

Socialist Party Scotland will support any and all actions taken by the unions to fight these attacks.
It is vital that this fight is won. The proposals will save the council £5 million from their wage bill. The target they have stated they need to save is £40 million.

We can be certain that if the £5 million of cuts goes through, they will be coming the rest of the money next year as austerity continues to be inflicted on the poorest.

Build a new mass workers’ party

Year after year the situation in Aberdeen is the same. Public services are slashed as the Council Leadership enforce cuts-budgets mandated by the SNP in Holyrood. Holyrood in turn blame the funding formulas and economic mismanagement from austerity governments in Westminster in a farcical show of ‘pass the buck’ which has deadly consequences.

The council claims they have no choice but to pass on these cuts to the working-class people of Aberdeen and ‘balance the books’. The reality is that there is a choice. The council could set a no-cuts budget using a combination of borrowing powers, reserves and financial capitalisation.

This decision has been made in the past – heroically by the Liverpool City Council’s socialist Labour council in the 1980s, who, backed by thousands of Trade Unionists, fought Westminster enforced cuts to deliver on housing, leisure facilities, and jobs.

Following in the footsteps of Liverpool in the 1980s would set an example for the rest of the local authorities in Scotland. Fighting back against central government mandated austerity is not impossible. It is a necessity.

Unfortunately, in Aberdeen we know the SNP and the Liberal Democrats, like Labour before them, won’t lift a finger to do that. They are committed to a capitalist system which inflicts misery on the working-classes while rich billionaires are rewarded with tax breaks.

That’s why we need a fighting socialist and trade union-based electoral alternative in the form of a mass workers’ party to be built. Councillors from such a party would have no hesitation in fighting cuts and standing up for workers rights.

Such a party would be the base for a transformation from a capitalist society, based on the creation of profits over providing for and taking care of people, to a socialist society, under democratic working-class control, based on meeting need.

If you agree, join us in that fight.