EDITORIAL

At the time of writing, local authorities throughout Scotland are setting their budgets for the year ahead.

For workers in the community and voluntary sector, the expected huge cuts in funding for organisations in the sector mean the misery of job losses, pay cuts, and regressive terms and conditions.

These cuts will, of course, only intensify a process that has been well underway for some time now. Over the past year or so we have witnessed a sector-wide pattern of cuts and redundancies, as employers have responded to local authority pressure to make savings, and positioned themselves for the major cuts coming in the next financial year.

In the large employers such as Quarriers, Enable, Capability Scotland, and The Mungo Foundation, for example, our members have endured pay freezes and major reductions in their terms and conditions, while job losses have been scattered here, there and everywhere across the sector.

UNISON’s defence of public services recognises the role that the sector we work in has in delivering these, and, as the cuts deepen, it is vital that we continue to have our voice heard in the campaign against them.

Unlike some who claim to represent the community and voluntary sector, we believe in defending all public services and the jobs and terms and conditions of the workers who deliver them, whether employed in the public sector or the community and voluntary sector.

Although the cuts have started, the battle for an alternative goes on. An alternative that takes as its starting point a recognition that the viciousness of the cuts reflects the Tories’ inherent ideological hatred of public services.

An alternative that points to a tax system weighted in favour of the wealthy, and to the continuing scandal of bankers’ bonuses, to give lie to the claim that ‘we are all in this together’. And an alternative that challenges and dismantles the ‘common sense’ assertion that these cuts are necessary and unavoidable.

The ConDem government has made its intentions clear. Our jobs and livelihoods, the services we deliver, and the future of public services as a whole are at stake.