Scottish Water is in crisis, with staff about to go out on strike. On Tuesday Scottish Water staff from UNISON and the other TU’s in the publicly owned utility went to the Scottish Parliament to speak to MSPs
This briefing outlines the most serious issues:
“Scottish Water is being hollowed out. Formally this is the jewel in the crown of Scotland’s public services. The reality on, and under, the ground is more and more of its operations are being handed over to private operators, by a management whose behaviour and attitudes are identical to the executives of privatised English companies.
The employed workforce is being run down and underutilised while work is transferred – at increased cost – to private contractors. This is privatisation by stealth – technically Scottish Water will remain publicly owned but in reality becomes a resource from which profits can be extracted. To facilitate this management have conducted a long campaign of ignoring collective agreements and demonstrated a routine hostility to the recognised trade unions.