First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to intervene personally amid school and bin strikes

The First Minister will personally intervene in talks with local authority leaders and unions amid mass strikes across council services.

Nicola Sturgeon will meet separately with union representatives and COSLA on Thursday as hundreds of schools are set to close when staff walk out over their pay.

Major clean-up operations are under way across the country in the wake of the first wave of cleansing worker strikes.

Waste service staff walked out in more than 20 councils in the pay dispute.

When will bin strikes end and when is the second wave?

But a second wave of strikes is set to see widespread closures of waste and recycling centres and cancellations of bin uplifts again next week.

Sturgeon will host council leaders at 1pm before sitting down with trade unions at 2.30pm.

With only a matter of days before disruption restarts, councils have announced instructions for what to do with your bins.

But they have warned that with huge backlogs there may be delays to emptying bins as priority buildings are given focus.

A total of 12 councils are expecting to be hit by education and early years staff strikes next week with many announcing that all nurseries, primaries and additional support for learning schools will close for three days.

What schools in Scotland are closing amid council staff strikes?

On Monday morning, unions recieved a new pay offer from COSLA but Unite, Unison and GMB rejected it.

Previously, the First Minister has said all options in making more funding available amid ongoing strikes have been “exhausted”.

The latest COSLA offer included a minimum pay uplift of £1,925, based on a 37-hour working week, matching the offer made to local government in England.

Deputy first minister John Swinney said the Scottish Government would provide a further £100m to local government for 2022-23 to support the cost of living payments being offered as part of the pay award on top of £140m already allocated.

Councillor Katie Hagmann, COSLA resources spokesperson said: “We remain in intense active discussions with our trade union colleagues.”