UNION chiefs fighting to protect the future of hundreds of Glasgow Life jobs have called for an extra £17million to be found to allow all venues to reopen.
Unison representatives held a crucial meeting with senior officers from the arms-length organisation which looks after culture and leisure services on behalf of Glasgow City Council and council officers.
Read more: City unions take action over Glasgow Life job losses
The charitable trust suffered devastating losses due to lockdown closures. Glasgow Life has lost £38m during the pandemic and its estimated income for 2021/22 is just £6.4m.
An agreed council funding deal will see Glasgow Life receive a guaranteed £100m for the next four years to open 90 out of its 171 venues. Without further funding, they say they cannot reopen any more venues.
Glasgow Life said the job cuts would be made over a five year period and would not involve compulsory redundancies.
Read more: Glasgow pub institution popular with Sir Billy Connolly bought by Celtic saviour
Last month Unison said Glasgow Life failed to properly consult staff about the plans and raised a grievance.
Brian Smith, Unison Glasgow branch secretary, said: “We restated that the trade union's main objective was to win £17m from either the council or Scottish Government to reopen all the venues.”
He said they were told that if Glasgow Life got the extra money then there would be no or few job cuts. The 500 jobs figure is an arithmetical calculation based on the £17m required.
In the absence of more money, it is understood the organisation reiterated there would be no compulsory redundancies and explained job reductions would be through voluntary job role changes, deletion of posts as people leave and voluntary retirement/redundancy.
Mr Smith added: “We have confirmation of the size of the problem. If the extra cash was forthcoming there wouldn’t be a risk to 500 posts. However, if they don’t get the money it looks like it is the only way savings can be made.
“Our members are naturally anxious particularly if they work in venues which have yet to reopen. Even with the statement of no compulsories, redeployment can still bring it concerns about their future.
"So, main fight remains winning more money from out with Glasgow Life to protect jobs and services.”
This latest development comes as The Herald leads a campaign for A Fair Deal for Glasgow calling for the city’s venues and treasures to be funded appropriately and for both the Scottish and UK governments to come together to deliver a new funding plan for Glasgow’s culture and leisure services.
A spokesperson for Glasgow Life said: “We recognise the strength of feeling there is about venues without reopening dates and meet unions regularly to discuss the impact the pandemic continues to have on Glasgow Life. Our ability to open more venues is entirely dependent on more funding becoming available. The £100m funding guarantee we received from Glasgow City Council is being used in fully reopening more than 90 venues across the city.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel