UNISON is calling on Richard Lochhead, Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science to intervene urgently to prevent compulsory redundancies in the catering services of City of Glasgow and Clyde colleges. Many of the workers affected by the redundancy notices are long-serving colleagues who were formerly directly employed by these colleges before services were outsourced to private multi-nationals, Baxter Storey (City of Glasgow) and Sodexo (Clyde College).

21 colleagues at Clyde and 21 at City of Glasgow stand to be the first victims of COVID-19 related dismissal in the sector unless the Minister steps in now. These staff are already the lowest paid in the sector and are therefore likely to be most severely affected by being left jobless in the current climate. Clyde colleagues, in particular, are not even paid the Living Wage due to the college's continued failure to ensure all its outsourced workers are paid the Living Wage and was the last of 20 colleges to gain Living Wage accreditation. 

Compulsory redundancies fly in the face of one of the key dimensions of the Scottish Government's Fair Work policy - job security. 

For far too long, private companies have benefited from the profit-making opportunities in the public sector but have shown they'll withdraw and leave staff jobless and students without services when they decide there is not enough profit. UNISON believes that outsourcing these services costs our sector money while the service makes a material profit for the private companies. These profits could be re-invested in other college areas at a time when the sector is asking for more funding. 

UNISON therefore calls on the Education Minister to commission an independent review of public spending on outsourced services in Further Education colleges to ensure best use of public funds, ascertain the cost of the outsourcing model versus in-house provision and ensure that services in colleges also reflect the Scottish Government's own Fair Work policy.