Under-fire West Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) was “repeatedly warned” that waste collection workers would refuse overtime shifts over the festive period in a row over pay, according to a union.
Last week, WDC announced it had pushed back its bin collection schedule, sparking fury among residents who are forced to wait an extra two weeks for their bins to be emptied.
The council blamed “workforce resource challenges” – after already attaching the festive schedule details to thousands of bins – as they failed to convince workers to ‘volunteer’ to work overtime shifts between Christmas and New Year.
But the union representing waste workers says council chiefs were “repeatedly warned” that staff would refuse to volunteer to work in a row over proposed changes to holiday pay.
Keir Greenaway, the GMB Scotland’s senior organiser in the public sector, said WDC wants to save money by reclassifying up to five days of public holiday as normal leave next year when special rates of pay will not apply.
As a result, workers opted to refuse the festive shifts.
Mr Greenaway said: “For councillors to blame workers for this situation is as offensive as it is misleading.
“The council seems intent on removing public holidays and special rates of pay despite the opposition of our members and should not be surprised by their response, particularly since they were repeatedly warned.
“These changes will hit workers in frontline services from cleansing to social care hardest and, instead of blaming them, councillors should be apologising to them.
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“Then they should encourage their officials to engage with staff to ensure they are treated fairly and with respect.
“In the season of goodwill, it is particularly disappointing that councillors are showing so little to the staff delivering crucial services supporting communities across West Dunbartonshire.”
Residents whose bins were due to be collected on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day were initially told that they would be emptied that weekend. However, the council later advised that they will not be uplifted until at least January 8.
It means residents are being forced to wait four weeks between bin collections during the festive period.
Labour Councillor David McBride, the council’s convener of and spokesperson for Infrastructure, Regeneration & Economic Development, this week said that it was “really disappointing” that the council had been forced in to revising the festive bin schedule.
“The provision of our refuse service has always relied on the voluntary overtime to cover the gaps during public holidays and my understanding is that those volunteers receive overtime payments, public holiday payments and they also receive a re-rostered public holiday day in lieu of working the public holiday”, he said.
“We have always been very appreciative of those staff who volunteer to work on a public holiday to ensure that we can continue to deliver a quality service to local residents during holiday periods.
“Unfortunately, the trades unions balloted their members and the majority agreed that they will no longer volunteer to work on public holidays. I recognise this was also a really difficult decision for those who usually volunteer as they will have lost out on hundreds of pounds of additional payments, which many households rely on over the festive period.”
Cllr McBride said that the council’s chief officer for Roads and Neighbourhoods Services was aware of the result of the trade union ballot and informed the leader and deputy leader that the timing meant that she had no option but to make changes to the planned bin collections as the notification came too late to be able to provide cover over the festive period as there were no volunteers to provide the service.
He added: “As this is an operational issue, the Chief Officer of Roads and Neighbourhoods Services developed a plan to adjust the services and she also produced a communications message that would be shared to residents.
“The leader of the council and the deputy leader were given sight of the communications which were completed on Thursday, December 19 at around 8.30am detailing the required changes.
“I fully appreciate the level of disruption that this has caused for a large number of households over the festive period and I apologise for any inconvenience that has been caused. I too will be personally affected by the change to planned service.
“However, it is clear that we have a systematic failure and that we can no longer rely on voluntary overtime for service provision. Therefore, I have asked the Chief Officer to bring forward alternative solutions so that our residents affected by the lack of volunteers to deliver a quality waste collection service, so we will never be in this position again.
“Many of our frontline staff are required to provide services over public holidays and their working arrangements and shift patterns mean that cover is provided without having to rely on the voluntary overtime on public holidays.
“By addressing this systematic failure local services should be able to be maintained 365-days-a-year without having to rely on volunteers working additional hours at overtime rates and remove a single point of failure in the current arrangements.”
West Dunbartonshire Council has been contacted for comment.