Take waste home plea from council over Edinburgh Festival bin strike

The leader of City of Edinburgh Council has urged people to take their rubbish home with them if strikes go ahead during the Edinburgh Festival.

Cammy Day said taking food or drink containers back to visitors’ own properties or hotels would ease pressure during the planned eight-day stoppage by refuse workers from 14 August.

GMB, Unison and Unite members voted to take industrial action in 26 of Scotland’s 32 councils after rejecting a pay deal from council body Cosla.

Cosla said the deal was at the limit of affordability for councils but it was committed to further talks with unions.

Cosla has described the pay offer – which would have seen workers receive a blanket 3.2% rise for a one-year period between 1 April this year and 31 March 2025 – as “strong, fair and credible”.

Mr Day insisted local authorities could not put any more money towards the deal themselves, saying the 3.2% offer was already a stretch for many of them and “any more would mean reductions and cuts in services from local government”.

He called on First Minister John Swinney to intervene and prevent the strike action with additional government funding for council workers’ pay.

A similar strike in 2022 was only resolved when former first minister Nicola Sturgeon stepped in.

With the unions insisting the offer is less than that being made to their counterparts in England, Mr Day urged Scottish ministers to “find that little more to avert strike action”.

He told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland: “I absolutely accept the impact over the festival will not be pleasant, as it was in 2022.

“I understand the meetings were productive but no further offers have come to the table as of yet.

“But 26 council leaders across Scotland do not want strike action to happen, nor do the trade union members.”

He said the council had been working with businesses to prepare ahead of the strikes.

“We’ve found that a lot of the waste build-up was particularly from coffee cups and takeaway boxes,” he said.

“So we’re encouraging businesses to ask customers to take the waste home to their own properties or their hotels.

“A lot of the people in the city are tourists as well who stay in accommodation that has private waste collectors.”

But he added: “We should do as much as we can to avoid strike action happening in the first place.”

Mr Day said he hoped the impact on local waste would not be bad, but there could be a lot of rubbish build-up in the centre during the busy festival period.

“I absolutely accept the members’ right to take action,” he said. “They’ve seen the national settlement higher in England and I can see the argument for a little more.

“We want the Scottish government and Cosla to get around that table and find that little more to avert strike action.”

He said his understanding was the unions “expect no less than the national settlement, which was around 4%”.

Only six local authorities – Argyll and Bute, Na h-Eileanan an lar, Moray, Borders, Shetland and West Dunbartonshire – look set to be unaffected by strikes from at least one of GMB, Unison and Unite.

Talks took place on Tuesday with Finance Secretary Shona Robison, Cosla leaders and the unions.

While no new deal was agreed Ms Robison said afterwards that her officials would work with local government to “understand what an improved negotiating envelope may look like”.

She said: “While this move to plan strike action is within unions’ rights and is not entirely unexpected, it is nonetheless disappointing, given the constructive and positive dialogue with national representatives of all the local government unions and Cosla.

“I facilitated that dialogue because of the importance of supporting efforts to reach a fair pay deal.

“I recognise that the trade unions share that aim and I welcome their willingness to engage constructively with the process to achieve that.”

Recently-appointed Scottish Secretary, Ian Murray, said additional funding would come to Scotland though Labour government spending decisions – which the Scottish government could use to avert strikes.

However, Mr Murray told BBC Scotland News this funding was not yet in place.