The Local Government Association is refusing to negotiate or arbitrate over workers’ pay. Ed Miliband is apparently refusing to back their dispute. Meanwhile 1,600,000 school and council workers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland — 77 per cent of them women — have rejected their fourth consecutive annual pay cut and are quietly getting on with the business of providing council services and keeping schools going. 

For now that is. Hopefully they are also voting Yes in strike ballots currently being carried out by Unison, GMB and Unite. 

If our members give us the green light, expect all-out strike action in July and beyond. That’s unless the LGA starts talking and comes up with a better offer.

The background is this. Basic pay has declined by 14 per cent since 1997. Since 2010 there have been three pay freezes and a 1 per cent below-inflation increase last year. 

This means that under the coalition alone, pay has dropped each year, totalling a devastating 18 per cent decrease. With RPI at 2.5 per cent, this year’s 1 per cent “offer” to 1,600,000 workers covered by the National Joint Council for Local Government Services (NJC) would bring that loss to almost 20 per cent.

It’s a picture of long-term decline too — under Labour’s control of the LGA from 1997 — 2004 and the Conservative leadership since. 

Eight of the 16 pay settlements since 1997 have been below inflation, as is this year’s “offer.” 

There’s a little more on the bottom pay points — needed to allow the LGA to escape the embarrassment of the bottom rate ending up just 1p above the national minimum wage.

The 1997 Single Status agreement designed to achieve equal pay between men and women was not funded by central government, leaving councils to find the money themselves, unlike the equivalent Agenda For Change in the NHS. 

Councils paid out £3 billion in equal pay settlements and legal fees, rather than negotiate equal pay-proofed structures for the future.

Apart from about 20,000 NHS workers, no other part of the public sector has a bottom rate below the current living wage of £7.65 pence an hour. 

A shocking 480,000 NJC workers earn well below that and over one million are paid below the hourly equivalent of a full-time salary of £21,000. 

That’s over £6,000 less than current median earnings across the economy and far less than their counterparts in comparable public-sector jobs. 

In 2011 and 2012, all other public-sector workers earning below £21,000 received £250 promised by Chancellor George Osborne. NJC workers were refused it.

That’s not the end of the story. For a number of years, the LGA has pushed for a freeing up of the NJC collective agreement — the Green Book — to allow for local negotiations on conditions of service, while pay would remain negotiated centrally. 

This is in response to the unions’ refusal to agree to cut conditions, which are already the worst across the entire public sector. 

That refusal led them to send out two missives to councils and schools urging them to cut pay, hours and conditions to save money. 

In the meantime they have refused to increase car allowances for the last four years.

The results are devastating. On top of a severe drop in basic pay, almost all councils have now cut some conditions and car allowances have almost universally been reduced to basic HMRC rates, leaving many of our members to subsidise their employers for the pleasure of providing their own cars for work. 

Annual leave, sick pay, maternity pay and unsocial hours premium rates have all been slashed. Some councils have also imposed unpaid annual leave and new charges for car parking.

With 40 per cent budget cuts for English councils under the coalition and a better but worsening situation in Wales and Northern Ireland, no-one expects that this neglect of a vital public service workforce could be put right overnight — although there is over £19bn in council reserves in England alone. What is remarkable is the complacency with which our members are viewed. Why?

Gender might provide one answer. Three-quarters of the workforce are women. Some 61 per cent of all NJC jobs are part-time and women occupy 91 per cent of them. 

Many do cleaning, care, catering and basic admin work, which is undervalued across the economy and is seen as an extension of what women do for nothing in the home. 

Jobs have changed little since they were created in the post-war period when few married women worked full-time. 

Meanwhile over 60 per cent of elected councillors are men, who also hold the vast majority of senior decision-making posts.

One of two new surveys about to be published by Unison’s local government section shows that 60 per cent of those part-time workers work regular unpaid overtime. 

Their hours have been slashed, yet they increasingly are covering vacant full-time posts. 

No wonder that 64 per cent feel they are not paid enough. 

In the other, over 94 per cent say that the “recovery” is mainly benefitting the well-off. 

Our members have had enough of being taken for granted. Look out for the biggest women’s strike in a long time.

Heather Wakefield is head of the local government service group of Unison.