The strike vote was the latest move in a long-running dispute between Unison, the trade union representing the 3,000 nursery nurses, and their local authority employer, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA).
Last week Unison said that 81 per cent of the nursery nurses had voted for an all-out strike and that the ballot had had a 70 per cent turnout. The union said it had held the ballot to reaffirm the mandate for industrial action after ten months of dispute with CoSLA, even though it had not been required to do so under employment legislation.
Angela Lynes, chair of Unison's industrial action committee, described the ballot result as 'magnificent'. She said, 'The nursery nurses have spoken.
And spoken clearly. They deserve to have their pay increased and they want that increase to be applied across Scotland.'
Carol Ball, chair of Unison's nursery nurses working party, added, 'It is clear that Scotland's nursery nurses are still together, still united and still want to achieve a proper wage across the country.' The nursery nurses are on a pay scale that starts at 10,000 a year, which they want raised to around 14,000 a year.
In a statement, CoSLA said that it 'regrets immensely' the disruption the nursery nurses' action was causing to parents and children. 'We genuinely believe that the proposals developed at a national level on a new grading structure, model job outlines and a career development framework for nursery nurses represents a fair basis for settlement for this group of local government staff,' it added.
But Unison argued that not only were the nursery nurses 'the largest single group of qualified childcare professionals delivering the highest-quality early years education and childcare within nursery schools, classes, day nurseries and all early years establishments', but also that there had not been a review of their job or pay since 1988.
It said the nursery nurses 'had gained significant increased responsibilities since 1998' that were not reflected by salaries.
Unison added, 'They plan, assess, evaluate, observe, record and monitor every aspect of each child's learning, ensuring that they access a broad, varied, stimulating, thought-provoking, and fun pre-five curriculum. This is demanded by documents and policies such as local starting points, Scottish national curriculum guidelines and national care standards.'
But CoSLA said, 'We have developed a framework for councils to develop their own proposals based on the needs of the service they provide, but Unison wants to see a "one size fits all" binding agreement on councils.
They maintain that nursery nurses working 32 hours a week over 39 weeks in the year in schools and classes should be paid the same salary as those working full-time in 52-week a year social work establishments and irrespective of any differences in their duties.
'All we are advocating is that nursery nurses get paid the rate for the job they do for the hours they work.'
CoSLA insisted that it was not possible for it 'to impose a national solution to this dispute'. It added, 'It must be resolved by employers and trade unions sitting around a table and agreeing a way forward in each of the 32 local authority areas based on the make-up of the service each council provides.'
Individual councils, including Stirling, Perth and Kinross, South Lanarkshire, Aberdeen, Shetland and the Highlands, have settled the dispute. CoSLA said that most other councils had also prepared a pay offer in the hope of doing so too.
Unison was due to hold a meeting of its Scottish branches earlier this week to plan the indefinite action.
