Scottish Water staff will strike for two days from the early hours of Tuesday as a standoff over pay continues at the state-owned company. The striking workers’ union warned that emergency repairs and quality checks to water supplied to 5 million people across Scotland would not be carried out during the action on Tuesday and Wednesday. More than 1,000 workers in the Unison union will go on strike for the second time in a month in the pay dispute, after rejecting a deal that the union said was 2.6% and followed years of real-terms cuts to wages. The Unison Scottish Water branch secretary, Tricia McArthur, said: “Scottish Water workers are simply asking to be paid fairly for the essential services upon which everyone in Scotland relies. “Things are meant to be different in a publicly owned service like this. But senior managers are behaving no differently to those running private water companies south of the border.” Scottish Water said it “did not recognise” the figures cited by Unison and said that the offer of 3.4% with a guaranteed increase of £1,400 would spell a 5.5% rise for the lowest-paid. It said contingency plans were in place to enable it to maintain normal services during the strikes and advised customers to report any problems with the water as usual. Peter Farrer, Scottish Water’s chief operating officer, said the offer was “fair and progressive”, adding: “No one benefits from industrial action, and our focus is on continuing to deliver for our millions of customers across Scotland. We urge the unions to get back round the negotiating table as soon as possible.” Unlike in England, the water boards in Scotland were never privatised, and Scottish Water has said that it reinvests all profits, currently about £800m a year, directly back into its infrastructure, a network of 30,000 miles of pipes and about 2,000 treatment works. Although Scotland has not experienced the scandals around financial and environmental mismanagement seen at English privatised water companies such as Thames Water, agencies have still warned that its sewage pollution could be far more widespread than realised. Environmental Standards Scotland last year said that there had been thousands of sewage overflow incidents in the previous 12 months, with some Scottish storm overflows releasing sewage more than 500 times. The agency said that sites were spilling more frequently than should be expected, with risks to health and the environment, and that only a fraction were fully monitored.
Author: Gwyn Topham