COUNCIL and leisure services in Inverclyde will be hit by a one-day strike later this month over a long-running pay row.

Around 1,500 local members of the union Unison are expected to take part in national industrial action.

Unison warned today there is ‘real anger’ among members over the pay dispute.

The union’s Inverclyde branch secretary, Robin Taggart, said he expected ‘widespread’ impact across all council and Inverclyde Leisure services.

He warned: “Following the strike day, Unison will then be looking at different forms of industrial action which will not impact on members financially, such as selective action.” Mr Taggart pointed out that hundreds of Inverclyde Council jobs had gone because of cutbacks since 2007, but so far there had been no compulsory redundancies.

He said: “In voting to take industrial action, Unison members have clearly had enough of the employer’s attitude towards pay.

“Two years of a pay freeze followed by an imposed one per cent increase this year and next year means many members, in particular low paid members, cannot keep up with cost of living increases.

“Poverty among working families is at an alarmingly high level and employers, especially those in the public sector, have a duty to tackle this problem rather than perpetuate it.” The union says the pay of its local government members has been eroded by 14 per cent over the last seven years, based on the retail price index.

Unison regional officer for local government Douglas Black said members were balloted between 9 and 29 September, and the result was 53.5 per cent in favour of taking action and 46.5 per cent against.

He said: “We will be running a programme of action which will affect every area of Scotland.

“We do not take decisions like this lightly.

“Our members know how many people rely on our services but local government pay has dropped and we have seen 39,400 job losses.

“Members feel they have to say ‘enough is enough’.

Inverclyde Council responded by saying that, because this is a national issue, it would be appropriate for comment to come from COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

COSLA human relations spokesperson, Councillor Billy Hendry, told the Tele the strike was ‘utterly irresponsible’.

He said: “This was a deal which was recognised by both GMB and Unite trade unions at the time as being the best available in local government in the UK in 2014/15, and which all other bargaining groups accepted as reasonable.

“I wrote to Unison directly to recognise that this was not the time for industrial unrest in local government and that we should be concentrating our efforts on the next round of negotiations due to begin next month, but which are now threatened as a consequence of this decision.

“Nearly 90 per cent of Unison members did not vote for strike action.”