Nursery nurse members of the public services union Unison took part in a three-day programme of strike action across Scotland last week, demanding a review and regrading of their jobs.
The action started on Tuesday in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, where around 2,500 nursery nurses went on strike. They were joined by 2,000 more strikers from the east and north of Scotland on Wednesday, and returned to work on Thursday and Friday respectively.
Carol Ball, chair of Unison's nursery nurse working party, said, 'This staggered action aims to try to minimise the disruption to parents while maintaining the highest possible public profile of nursery nurses.'
A rally of nursery nurses in Glasgow's George Square on Tuesday was told that the union at UK level had supported a plan of action that will continue for the next five weeks unless the employers come forward with a clear offer in Scotland. Jo Di Paola, Unison's Scottish local government organiser, said, 'Unison's National Industrial Action Committee, which met on Monday, agreed to a co-ordinated rolling programme of strikes over the next five weeks. We plan to strike in different parts of Scotland on different weeks, to ensure that the momentum continues, but parents don't have to face too much disruption.'
The strike action resulted in the closure of local authority-run nurseries and schools on strike days, and general disruption of the nursery service. The nursery nurses have also started an indefinite boycott of duties that have been added to their responsibilities since their last pay review 15 years ago, including observation, recording assessment and evaluation processes, planning and development tasks, student training, all work outside normal working hours, and all clerical, janitorial and cleaning tasks.
Ms Ball said that parents had been very supportive of the strike action. 'Parents want to know that their children are being educated by people with the proper training, qualifications and conditions. They recognise the justice in our members' claim, and recognise that a badly paid service will not deliver the quality education and care their children deserve.'
The union submitted a national claim for a regrading of nursery nurses' posts in 2001. It was rejected because the employers' organisation, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), said there was no national mechanism for dealing with it. The union then submitted the claim individually to each local authority. A joint working group was set up last November in an attempt to break the deadlock, but Unison said that COSLA continued to maintain that it was not legitimate to address a national claim, leaving it no option but to ballot on industrial action.
COSLA has consistently argued that nursery nurses' pay should be addressed through the single status agreement, a re-grading of all local authority employees' jobs. However, the implementation of single status has been subject to delays, and nursery nurses are not convinced that it will help them. Their salaries range from 10,000 to a maximum of 13,800.
COSLA expressed disappointment that Unison had chosen to press ahead with strike action and said that the dispute could have been avoided if Unison had continued to negotiate.
COSLA spokesperson Councillor Frank Russell said, 'We recognise that nursery nurses feel undervalued and disappointed that their changing role has not been recognised in their pay. A proper re-evaluation of their job descriptions and grades is required. This evaluation should take place under the process agreed by the single status agreement, and not through unwarranted and unnecessary strike action.'
