Glasgow City Council Pauses Plan to Fire and Rehire 23,000 Staff

Glasgow City Council has paused a plan to fire and rehire around 23,000 members of staff, as talks with trade unions over a new pay deal are set to resume early next week, according to the BBC.

The fire-and-rehire approach, in which an employer terminates existing employment contracts and offers to rehire staff on new terms, is a mechanism sometimes used when negotiations between employers and unions have stalled. Its potential use by a local authority on a workforce as large as 23,000 employees would have represented an unusually large-scale application of the tactic in the UK public sector.

According to the report, discussions between the council and three trade unions will resume in the coming days in an attempt to reach a fresh agreement on pay, potentially avoiding the need for the council to proceed with the contract termination and rehiring process.

Background to the Dispute

The report does not detail the specific pay terms in dispute or the reasons the fire-and-rehire option was put forward in the first place, but such moves by public bodies typically arise from budgetary pressures or efforts to standardise pay structures across a large workforce. Local authorities in the UK have faced sustained financial strain in recent years, often citing constrained budgets as a driver of difficult decisions affecting staff terms and conditions.

The pause in the fire-and-rehire process suggests both sides see room for a negotiated settlement, though the report does not indicate how confident either party is that next week's talks will succeed. If no agreement is reached, the council could still choose to revive the fire-and-rehire plan at a later date.

Further details on the scope of the proposed changes to pay and conditions, and the identities of the three unions involved, were not included in the available report.