Hundreds more jobs on the line

Many councils - including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Borders, Highlands, East Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire - announced huge cuts at budget meetings held this week, while others are due to agree their plans next week.

Glasgow's £70 million cuts package includes major reductions to schooling and social care budgets alongside increased parking, nursery and school meal charges.

The strategy could cost up to 300 council jobs with a further 600 at risk in the arms' length social care organisation Cordia.

Unison Scottish local government committee chairwoman Stephanie Herd said: "Across Scotland, local services that people rely on daily are already under immense strain, with more spending cuts to come.

"Given the scale of the damage that is being done, we need a much wider review of how to fund services.

"There are stealth cuts too, where staff struggle with massive workloads and increased demand."

Unison Scotland figures indicate that a total of 34,500 jobs have been lost in local government since 2008/9.

And local government union GMB Scotland said that 27,000 jobs have been lost in Scotland's councils - almost 10 per cent of the workforce - since the Con-Dems came to power in 2010.

GMB Scotland senior organiser Alex McLuckie said: "Thousands have already lost their jobs and we think the latest cuts could result in another 10,000 job losses across the 32 councils.

"Education and social work will be targeted by many councils for the first time, because they have already cut back in other areas."

McLuckie added: "What we have witnessed is nothing less than an all-out assault on council workers, who, if they have been able to keep their jobs, have seen their pay cut, hours of work increased, pensions cut and workloads increased because of a lack of staff.

"We have seen the medicine from London given out yet again in a discredited austerity programme that is not working."