PAY, pensions and the cost-of-living crisis took centre stage on the first day of the Scottish TUC.

Moving a composited motion on pay, STUC general council member Mary Alexander reported that Scottish public-sector workers had seen a real-terms loss of wages equivalent to a 15 per cent pay cut over the last decade.

The motion, which passed unanimously, called for “harmonisation” of campaigning activity by different unions on pay across the public sector and called for a national pay demonstration.

Public and Commercial Services union president Fran Heathcote said that while First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had “praised our members in the highest degree” during the pandemic, acknowledging that Scotland could not have been run without them, Holyrood’s pay policy did not protect the low-paid and only “offered minimums that in cash terms are less than they were last year.”

Like workers across Britain, civil servants were finding there is “too much month at the end of the money,” Ms Heathcote said.

Unison’s Lorraine Thomson said a co-ordinated pay fightback was necessary given inflation was at its highest for 30 years, with the cost of basics like pasta up 140 per cent on this time last year.

Congress also demanded action on equal pay, noting that Glasgow City Council was still paying workers on a “discriminatory pay scheme” despite the equal pay victory of the 2018 Glasgow women’s strike. 

In an amendment proposed by GMB, it agreed to begin triannual weekend workshops on “organising and campaigning tactics for the women workers leading the fight for equal pay.”

But at a lunchtime fringe on Pay, Pensions and the Cost of Living organised by the Trade Union Co-ordinating Group, unions shared experiences from recent industrial action and ballots and said a joined-up fightback against class war being waged by the government and employers was urgent.

We were not all in it together: “The profits of the oil multinationals are so huge they say they don’t know what to do with them, but they want us to pay bigger bills. The arms companies are raking it in — but they want us to pay for the war in Ukraine,” Ms Heathcote said.

Speakers from different unions relating the attacks on workers in their sectors underlined the scale of the attack on ordinary people’s pay, pensions and working conditions across the board.

Sarah Woolley of food workers’ union BFAWU noted that the very people keeping the country fed through the pandemic were struggling to put food on their own tables.

University and College Union president Vicky Blake noted that university workers had had to take industrial action in five consecutive years over attacks on their pension scheme and casualisation. 

“While we’ve been fighting actively and visibly, our membership has been growing,” she noted, observing that “when we fight we can win; and we also build.”

FBU Scotland’s Colin Brown stressed that the cost-of-living crisis had been putting the squeeze on workers for over a decade – “prior to Brexit. Prior to Covid. Prior to war in Ukraine.”

Firefighters had lost the equivalent of £4,000 a year over the last decade, he said, with a 13 per cent cut in the number of firefighters putting operational safety at risk and ministers now trying to widen their responsibilities to include adult social care and other specialisms.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch summed up: “Everything we have is under attack.

“We are at a pivot point for the labour movement. We’ve seen at P&O what bosses are prepared to do to strip us of the terms we’ve negotiated over the years.

“We’ve seen with P&O how weak the laws to protect workers are. If we let this go, we’ll be on the run for the next 20 years.”

Mr Lynch called for sector-wide bargaining with unions forming national bargaining councils, setting joint demands and taking co-ordinated action when those demands are refused.

In rail, meetings with the Department for Transport in London or Transport for Scotland heard the same mantra about “savings” meaning massive cuts. “Two billion in savings on the railways… £600 million to come out of the workforce itself.”

New attacks included attempts to remove collectively agreed rosters for a 24-7 workforce, replacing them with rosters agreed by individuals.

“We hear: your sick pay is far too generous — look what other workers are on. Like your pension scheme.

“I say: our conditions are ours. You negotiated them with us. We agreed them. We will not accept imposed change,” he said to applause.

Calling for a more militant fightback from the TUC, he said: “June 18” — the new deal for workers national demonstration — “must just be the beginning.”