Edinburgh Anarchists

The election campaign’s looking up. We had Cameron egged the other day (did it hit? pics or didn’t happen!) and now today Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon got her rhetorical arse handed to her by one of Edinburgh City Council’s binmen.

They’ve of course been involved in a long-running dispute over plans to take a quarter of this guy’s salary off of him. Video footage here.

Notice how there’s no answer to this question: “What’s the point of a government if you don’t protect my salary?”

The picket of the scab Council waste depot (mentioned here) has been going well – last Saturday saw around 50 hardy souls sending a strong message to Turley & the gang. Drew the eye of the Evening News ADHD massive as well.

Same again this weekend, see you there!

A call for support in the long-running council manual workers’ dispute (see Edinburgh Muckraker for background).

SUPPORT EDINBURGH REFUSE WORKERS’ PICKET OF SCAB DEPOT

6am Saturday 13th March
Craigmillar Community Recycling Centre,
Old Dalkeith Road (See below for directions)

Join Edinburgh refuse workers in picketting the workplace used by private contractors providing cover for the their ongoing industrial action. Edinburgh’s refuse workers, along with street cleaners, grave diggers, toilet attendents and other manual workers have been fighting against cuts to their pay of up to £6,000. By working to health and safety rules and banning overtime they have kept up the fight to defend their wages for over 8 months.
The Council is cynically using Single Status (equalising pay between men and women) as an excuse to slash pay for its lowest paid workers. Workers now face cuts to their pay and conditions being imposed after the Council failed to reach agreement with unions.
Private companies have been providing scab labour thoughout the dispute and the Council has ignored Freedom of Information requests seeking to find out just how much this has cost the City but many have estimated the cost to be several million pounds.
If this dispute is lost the average wage for Council workers will fall from around £19,000 to around £13,000 which will be disatrous for hundreds of workers.

Directions to picket;
Head out of City Centre on Dalkeith Road (A7) to Cameron Toll roundabout. Take the second exit on roundabout onto Old Dalkeith Road. Continue for 500 yards until you see sign for ‘Recycling Centre’ to the left.

Lothian Buses nos 21, 24, 38, 33, 38, 48, 49.
The first 33 on a Sunday leaves Haymarket at 5.46am and North Bridge at 5.53am arriving at Cameron Toll at 6.03am

Some additional info about who works in that depot (hey, it’s the Council, it can’t be simple)

Just a few points re the ‘SUPPORT EDINBURGH REFUSE WORKERS’ PICKET OF SCAB DEPOT’ below.

• The scabs working overtime out of Craigmillar Depot on a Saturday and Sunday are not ‘private contractors’.  A few of the scabs are fulltime City of Edinburgh Council employees who are Unite the Union members;  some of the other scabs are fulltime City of Edinburgh Council employees who have attempted to justify scabbing by either coming out off or not being members of any trade union, most of the scabs are City of Edinburgh Council  employees on temporary contracts who have refused to join a trade union or support the work to rule.
• The majority of staff that will be going into Craigmillar Depot over the weekend work on the Task Force (Street Cleansing) side of things, on a 4on 4off shift pattern (this is a normal working day for these employees and is not overtime).  With the exception of the Task Force Managers; Unison members & Unite members from the Red & Blue Street Cleansing Shifts have fully adhered to and supported the work to rule within CEC Waste Management and will continue to do so.  There has also been a few allegations/investigations into street cleansing staff giving the scabs (refuse & task force managers) a hard time, however, nothing has progressed to the CEC disciplinary process thus far.