Away from the single-issue pressure-group politics of the SNP’s referendum, the Scottish parliament is trying to continue with the matters which impact on people’s day-to-day lives.
Public sector procurement is an unlikely bread and butter issue but it presents an opportunity for progressives in Scotland to make positive impact on the income and lives of working Scots.
It is this thinking which is behind my proposed Living Wage (Scotland) Bill which seeks to maximise the benefits of the £9bn spend by the public sector on procurement each year by delivering a living wage to private sector employees engaged on public sector contracts. It also aims to compel the Scottish government to do more to promote the living wage across all sectors in Scotland.
Running concurrently with my proposals is a consultation by the Scottish government on their proposed Procurement Reform Bill. Unsurprisingly, given its title, the proposals are fairly wider-ranging but, disappointingly, seem to ignore a gaping hole in the middle of the Scottish government’s spending of public money through their living wage policy.
While directly employed staff in the Scottish government and the NHS receive at least the living wage, those colleagues who work alongside permanent staff from agencies are not so fortunate.
Anecdotal evidence from the trade unions suggests that the Scottish government continues to use temporary and agency workers alongside its directly employed staff while having a moratorium on the recruitment of new staff into the civil service. Understandably, it is more difficult to enter into negotiations on pay and conditions for permanent employees if a succession of agency workers are carrying out the same work for less money and worse conditions.
We need to understand the full picture – and that is why I have lodged a series of parliamentary questions on the Scottish government’s practices on their use of temporary and agency workers – including trying to find out if the so-called Swedish derogation has been utilised.
An over-reliance of temporary and agency workers is also not the way to run an effective organisation. Of course, workers of this nature can have a role to play in meeting departmental workloads but if there is an unspoken strategy to favour them over the recruitment of new permanent staff then it will only lead to a less productive, lower-skilled, unstable workforce – and ultimately a poorer level of service.
The issue of a two-tier workforce is one that the unions and the Scottish government have tackled before. The formal partnership between the Labour/Liberal-led Scottish executive and the Scottish TUC delivered an early success in the shape of section 52 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 2003 which makes provisions to protect transferred workers and whose ministerial guidance explicitly focuses on: ‘… actively implementing the protocol which ends the two-tier workforce and protects workers who are transferred to new employers under contracts for the delivery of public services.’
If we’re serious about making sure our public services in Scotland are modern, efficient and successful then everything we do must be underpinned by first-class employment practice.
That means a living wage using Scottish government buying power; it also means increased training and development opportunities through procurement but most importantly it means eradicating the two-tier workforce by extending the 2003 Act to Scottish government departments and the NHS.
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John Park is a Labour MSP elected to the Scottish parliament in 2007. He is currently a member of the economy, energy and tourism committee. He tweets @john_park
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The consultation document for the proposed Living Wage (Scotland) Bill can be accessed here and the closing date for responses is Monday 3 December.
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