GLASGOW City Council is set to dismiss more than 23,000 non-teaching staff and rehire them on new contracts from 1 January after talks with the GMB, Unison and Unite over a new pay and grading system broke down.
Dismissal letters will go out next week to every non-teaching employee, from nursery staff and refuse collectors to chief executive Susanne Millar.
The new contracts would begin the day after the old ones end.
The council says the notices will be withdrawn if all three unions ballot their members on its pay offer.
Talks collapsed on Wednesday when Unison refused to put the offer to a vote.
Under the new scheme, which replaces a structure found to discriminate against mainly women workers, 63 per cent of affected staff would gain but 11 per cent would lose pay, some by around £11,500.
The council previously paid out about £770m after women in catering and cleaning were found to have been paid up to £3 an hour less than workers in male-dominated jobs such as refuse collection.
Unison Scotland regional organiser Mandy McDowall said: ‘Glasgow City Council staff are not going to be bounced into a shoddy deal by bosses trying to bully them with arbitrary deadlines.
‘The council’s decision to dismiss workers helps nobody and Glasgow City Council risks being labelled a pariah employer if it refuses to negotiate in good faith with its staff.’
Unite industrial officer Graham McNabb said: ‘Glasgow City Council must remove direct threats to our membership in its proposed new pay and grading structure, whether it is through cuts to terms and conditions, or the scandalous threat of fire and rehire tactics.
‘If they go down this reckless path then it will be met with the full force of Unite.’
The GMB and Unite say they won an extra £110m for the settlement and wanted the council to table the offer so it could be put to members.
They warned that this money was now ‘hanging by a thread’, and say they will enter into dispute immediately if the council goes ahead with the dismissals.
Unison says the £110m would go towards ‘assimilation and arrears’, meaning moving staff onto the new grades and paying money owed, and would do nothing for workers facing pay cuts.
It will ballot members once negotiations are finished.