A deal struck between Glasgow City Council and Unison has pulled the city back from the brink of one of the largest fire-and-rehire exercises in British municipal history, offering a reprieve to 23,000 council workers who spent weeks facing the prospect of dismissal and re-engagement on inferior terms. The agreement, announced on Monday, commits the local authority to protecting the wages of the lowest-paid staff for three years — a significant concession from a previous proposal that would have cut pay for 11 per cent of the workforce. Unison will now ballot its members on the revised package, with the GMB and Unite unions having already agreed to put the offer to their own memberships. While the threat of immediate industrial action has receded, both sides acknowledge that deep-seated questions over equal pay and grading structures remain unresolved.
A summer of uncertainty
The breakthrough follows a tense summer of stalled negotiations and escalating brinkmanship. In August, Unison negotiators walked out of talks over a pay and grading review originally designed to resolve historic equal pay disparities — a legacy of the landmark 2019 settlement that saw the council pay out more than £500m to thousands of women who had been systematically underpaid compared to male colleagues in comparable roles. The union argued the new proposals risked baking in fresh inequalities.
When discussions collapsed, the council moved swiftly. At the end of September, letters landed on the doormats of every non-teaching employee — from classroom assistants and home care workers to refuse collectors and administrative staff — informing them they were “at risk” of dismissal and re-engagement. The move, while legally permissible, provoked fury across the labour movement and opposition benches alike. Picket lines formed outside the City Chambers. Workers spoke of sleepless nights, mortgage fears, and the indignity of being treated as disposable after decades of service.
The deal on the table
Monday’s agreement represents a substantial shift. The council has agreed to a three-year pay protection guarantee for those who would have faced cuts, effectively ringfencing their current earnings while the new grading structure beds in. Ricky Bell, the SNP leader of Glasgow City Council, described the package as “strong and fair” and said he was “delighted that we have been able to reach agreement with Unison and remove the unpalatable prospect of fire-and-rehire.”
Bell was careful to stress there is no new money in the pot. The financial envelope remains fixed, a reality shaped by years of real-terms cuts to local government settlements from Holyrood. He thanked the Scottish Government for “additional support to help unlock agreement” — a form of words that hints at behind-the-scenes pressure from ministers keen to avoid a disruptive, politically damaging dispute in Scotland’s largest city.
For Chris Sermanni, Unison’s Glasgow branch secretary, the concession is proof that collective resistance works. “Unison stood firm because Glasgow’s workers deserved better than what was originally put on the table,” he said. “That position has secured significant movement. There’s now a path for Unison members to give their verdict without the immediate threat of dismissal and re-engagement hanging over them.”
The equal pay shadow
Yet the deal does not draw a line under the equal pay saga. The new grading structure — intended to create a transparent, gender-neutral framework — must still be stress-tested for its equality impact. Both sides have committed to continuing negotiations on that front. The fear among unions is that a system designed to fix discrimination could, if poorly calibrated, replicate it in new forms.
Women make up the majority of the council’s lower-graded workforce. They are the home carers who kept the city running through the pandemic, the early years practitioners shaping children’s futures, the catering staff feeding pupils in schools where child poverty rates remain stubbornly high. Any grading model that fails to properly value their labour risks repeating the mistakes of the past.
A ballot, not a victory lap
The four-week ballot begins within days. Its outcome is far from guaranteed. Rank-and-file members will weigh the security of pay protection against the unresolved questions over grading, career progression, and the long-term sustainability of a deal that relies on no new funding. Turnout will matter. So will the mood in depots, care homes, and school kitchens across the city over the coming weeks.
Bell said he looks forward to seeing the result. Sermanni promised his union would “keep fighting to give the whole workforce the information they need to make their decision.” In the meantime, the fire-and-rehire letters have been withdrawn. The picket lines have come down. But the underlying crisis — of a local government funding model that forces councils to balance books on the backs of low-paid women — remains very much alive.
Why it Matters
Glasgow’s near-miss with mass fire-and-rehire is a warning flare for the entire UK public sector. When the country’s largest council — employer to 23,000 people — reaches for the nuclear option of mass dismissal to impose a pay cut on its poorest workers, it signals a breakdown in the social contract that sustains local democracy. The fact that union resistance forced a retreat matters not just for the home carers and classroom assistants of Glasgow, but for every worker in every town hall watching to see if collective action still works. It does. But the deeper rot — a funding settlement that makes fair pay mathematically impossible without robbing Peter to pay Paula — will not be fixed by a three-year sticking plaster. The next fight is already coming.
