Improving Council Services
A roadside collection is much cleaner, more efficient, frees up back courts to be used as gardens instead of refuse dumping grounds - and would also get rid of 'single use' plastic bags which are still used in parts of Glasgow city centre.
A win win all round!
Back to the Future (18/09/15)
Councillor Frank McAveety during the referendum campaign
Now I like Frank and I worked with him back in 1998, as one of three external advisers to Glasgow's Public Standards Commission which he established to clean up the city council's image after a number of damaging scandals involving Scotland's largest council.
I was invited to serve on the Commission as Unison's head of Local Government in Scotland along with Endell Laird, the editor of the Daily Record and the time and an academic called Alan Alexander who was a professor of local government.
So while I have first hand experience of working with Frank I can't say that returning as Labour leader is a good move for either himself or the Labour Party.
Because the public message that's being sent out by his election is 'back to the future' - that Labour can't find the new talent that's required to reinvigorate the party and restore its fortunes in Glasgow.
Perhaps predictably, instead of coming up with some new thinking one of Frank's first public announcements has been on the archaic subject of 'trade union facility time' and the 'check off' system by which local councils help to collect union membership fees.
Both important issues in their own way, but hardly the kind of subject to persuade Glasgow's citizens that the council is focused on improving local services such as refuse collection which is old-fashioned and third-rate compared to the service provided in Edinburgh, for example.
The issue of 'facility time' is pretty straightforward in the sense that union representatives should have time off with pay to carry out their duties, but that the system should not be abused as it was, arguably, in the bitter dispute at the giant Ineos plant in Grangemouth where Unite called a disastrous strike after their local convenor faced disciplinary action after being accused of using his time off for Labour Party activities.
The chap resigned rather than attend a disciplinary hearing and the last I heard he was working for Unite, yet the lesson is clear: facility time is about representing the workforce not playing party politics.
I have written about the 'check-off' system previously in relation to Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, so maybe I should do the same for Glasgow City Council as well.
But what 'check-off' means is that the employer does the hard work of collecting trade union membership fees, including any political levy to the Labour Party, and the employer charges individual unions for providing this service.
Now there is a very good argument for extending this service to other parties and charities, for example, whereas at the moment it is restricted to just the Labour Party which doesn't seem terribly fair, especially in Scotland where the SNP is much more popular amongst trade union members.
Yet Frank's views, as reported in the Daily Record, are all about political showboating instead of dealing with the real issues:
“I will be writing to every public authority, including the Scottish Government, asking them not to comply with that part of the legislation in regard to facility time and check off.
“It is undemocratic, it is against the spirit of devolution and a direct attack on their right to determine their industrial relations.”
So while Frank's playing to the gallery to impress his union chums, I'm more interested in why Glasgow's refuse collection service is so poor.
Compared to, say, Edinburgh and many parts of continental Europe where a variety of different recycling and waste disposal bins are collected from the road or kerbside.
