| UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch |
|
|
Date 7 October 2003 Edinburgh Nursery Nurses lobby First Minister and public as anger growsUNISON's striking Edinburgh nursery nurses will lobby First Minister Jack McConnell's official residence at Bute House from 09.00 on Wednesday 8 October, before assembling at the Scott Monument at 11.45 to begin petitioning the public in the city centre. They will round off the day's events with a meeting at St Cuthbert's Church Lothian Road at 2.00pm. These events all take place on the third day of their week long strike at the start of a month's escalation around Scotland to try to get CoSLA back to the negotiating table. "Nursery nurses and parents are getting fed up with CoSLA pulling out the stops to 'spin' an insulting offer, instead of actually doing something to resolve the dispute. They seem to be prepared to sit back and let the disruption happen", said John Stevenson, UNISON's Edinburgh Branch Secretary. "For the vast majority of nursery nurses in Edinburgh, the CoSLA offer is actually a pay cut of 8p an hour. I don't know how often we have to point this out before councillors actually read the offer instead of listening to the CoSLA propaganda", said Barbara Foubister, Edinburgh UNISON Branch Chair and a nursery nurse herself. Worse still, says the union, the messages coming from the politicians are confusing. John Mulgrew, UNISON Edinburgh lead negotiator, said: "We were told in April we couldn't have a local claim and we should go to CoSLA. We went to CoSLA and they said it has to be local. The Council says the CoSLA offer is all that's there, but elsewhere they say it is only a minimum but won't offer anything else. No wonder the whole thing has dragged out and everybody is confused. "Surely Edinburgh, with key leading positions in Education and Personnel at CoSLA must be able do something to break this engineered deadlock", he added. On Thursday, nursery nurses will leaflet the Scottish Parliament. ENDS Further Information: John Stevenson: 0131 220 5655, 07876 795 018 Barbara Foubister: 0131 220 5655 John Mulgrew: 0131 220 5655 Chris Bartter, Scottish Communications Officer : 0141-342 2877(w) 0771 558 3729(m) UNISON Edinburgh Nursery Nurse pages: http://www.unison-edinburgh.org.uk/nursery.html UNISON Scotland Nursery Nurses minisite: http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/localgovt/nurserynurse |
|
