Thousands of public-sector workers in Scotland joined the walk-out over pensions yesterday, mounting picket lines at court buildings, passport offices and job centres.
Visitor attractions such as Edinburgh Castle, key defence installations such the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine base at Faslane near Glasgow, the Scottish Parliament and government buildings were also hit. The Public and Commercial Services union, which organised the day of industrial action, claimed the vast majority of its 30,000 members in Scotland were taking part, although this was disputed by some public agencies.
Some officials at Scottish airports were also on strike but there were no reports of significant delays for travellers in Scotland.
More than 700 people, including members of the Unite union and the University and College Union, staged a rally along with PCS members in Glasgow’s George Square. Some held placards with the words “final salary pension we deserve better” and “cut tax evasion avoidance”.
Lynn Henderson , the PCS Scottish secretary, said union members had gone on strike across Scotland, from Shetland down to the Borders. She added: “The feeling is an immense sense of anger against the attacks on the Civil Service pension, in particular, but also extreme worry about the future of their own jobs and how they are going to live and manage day-to-day with the pay cuts that they are actually already facing.
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“The Government are proposing to make changes to the Civil Service pension where people will have to work longer, pay more in contributions, for some people tripling what they are currently paying, and that that won’t go in their pension schemes in the end. That’s to pay off the deficit and go straight into Treasury coffers, not to their own scheme.”
Teachers in Scotland were not on strike since they are on a different pension scheme. In any case, many schools north of the Border are already on holiday.
The Scottish government said all of their buildings remained open with no reports of any serious disruption. A spokeswoman said: “Our returns show that 1,187 staff were on strike today, representing 16.2 per cent of the total of approximately 7,325 staff.”
Janice Godrich, the president of PCS, joined a picket line in Glasgow. She claimed there was strong support for the action. She said: “We’ve just seen two people, after discussions with their colleagues, turn around and decide not to go into work.”
Grahame Smith, the general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, told the Glasgow rally that he would not apologise, and no worker should apologise, if they had a final salary pension scheme and could retire before they were 65. Mr Smith added: “These attacks on public sector pensions are a cash grab to fund a deficit caused by greedy bank bosses, financial speculators and the politicians who let them away with it.”