THE newly elected GMB general secretary has said he would back strike action during Glasgow’s COP26 climate summit, saying it is “hypocrisy” for it to be held in the city which is “crumbling” and “filthy”.
Speaking to the Daily Record, Gary Smith said he is “deeply uncomfortable” with world leaders gathering to discuss a greener future this November when Glasgow’s “public realm is in a terrible state of decay”.
Smith hit out at the “huge cuts to public spending” leading to problems on the streets and with infrastructure, and noted that the city doesn’t have a “publicly owned, clean public transport system”.
READ MORE: Union boss hits out at 'irony of hosting COP26 in Scotland's filthiest city'
While he said strike action is a decision for local GMB members, he would support it. “If our members say ‘enough is enough’ in the lead up to COP over cuts and over discrimination at work, this union will not be found wanting.
“The social and environmental issues in Glasgow would justify an industrial response.”
Earlier this month Smith described Glasgow as “our filthiest city” during an online Westminster policy conference on the next steps to tackling climate change in Scotland.
“Working class communities have been abandoned in that city, and people are going to come and lecture them about climate change, with streets unswept, the libraries being closed down, the parks unkempt and overgrown,” he told the conference.
READ MORE: Cop26: Is Glasgow ready to host the UK's biggest ever climate summit?
“The whole city’s been allowed to go to rack and ruin and thousands of children every day go to school hungry.”
A Glasgow City Council source said: “Gary Smith knows nothing but utter disdain for Glasgow and Glaswegians and is now actively undermining the efforts of our workforce and his own members to keep this city clean.
"If he cared one jot about Glasgow he wouldn't be seeking to undo a generational opportunity with his Trumpian attitude to the changes every city across the world must make in the decade ahead.”
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