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A formal pay offer to local government unions from the Local Government Employers has been rejected as a ‘paltry award'. The LGE submitted an offer to unions of 2% in response to the union pay claim submitted to council bosses last month, which called for a 5% increase. Unison general secretary, Dave Prentis, stated at the time a 2% or less pay award was ‘unrealistic'. The LGE said the offer had been made in line with Consumer Price Index inflation targets, and the key aspect of the offer was to ‘make sure any settlement is affordable to taxpayers and councils'. But Unison's head of local government, Heather Wakefield, slammed the offer, calling it a pay cut. ‘This comes at a time when members are being asked to deliver more efficiency savings,' she said. ‘Local government claims to have made £3bn in efficiency savings and Gershon said the idea was to plough some of this back into local authorities. There is no evidence of this, yet there seems to be evidence of more outsourcing and redundancies.' And GMB national secretary for local government, Brian Strutton, added: ‘The public demands good-quality service from local councils. But they also expect people delivering services to be fairly rewarded for their hard work, not to face a pay cut and worse financial hardship.' On Tuesday, the eve of the 2007 budget, Mr Prentis called for the chancellor, Gordon Brown, to tackle ‘growing demoralisation' among the UK's public sector workers. An LGE spokesman said the door was open for further dialogue. Unison Scotland has this week launched its manifesto for the local government elections on 3 May as part of the campaign for fair pay, and against the privatisation of services.

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'Paltry' pay offer is rejected by unions

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