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More than 600,000 Scots are represented by the brothers and sisters who gather in Dundee's Caird Hall today for three days of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

You can gauge what's on their minds from the 110 motions.

There's concern from the Musicians' Union about the unreliability of digital radio reception. There's a call to combat workplace discrimination against stammering and stuttering. Lorry drivers with disabilities need better services and facilities, comrades will be told.

Dundee TUC wants an Allotment Strategy for Scotland. Among the 11 listed reasons: "a therapeutic environment beneficial to mental health... educational opportunity in horticulture... and they have an inherently democratic ethos based on co-operation and mutual support".

One of the more significant discussions trade unionists will have in Dundee could be about their own future. It seems that their recruitment among young workers is poor. Only 16% of men aged under 24 are union members and only 9% of young women.

While some of its members are woven into the fabric of the Labour Party, the STUC remains politically non-aligned. Yet it's no surprise to find number 110 simply titled: "Do not support the Tory party".

Militant rhetoric

I digress. The bigger ticket issues being raised for block voting include railway safety, with discussion of the twin strike strategy currently under way.

Eleven of the motions raise general concerns about the future of public services, and as many raise specific ones as they look to the axe falling on budgets.

They talk of protecting services, jobs and pensions. But do their members have the militancy to back up the indignant rhetoric? That will be a key issue in Dundee, and we won't know the answer for a few months yet.

What we do know, so far, is that companies that used to be nationalised - in utilities, rail and British Airways - have been the most militant in striking against the private sector squeeze. The public sector is even more highly unionised.

Significantly, the tone of these STUC motions is not to accept that the axe needs to fall. They can be expected, for instance, to support the Educational Institute of Scotland in "deploring the emerging political consensus on the need for savage public spending cuts, ignoring alternative responses, including increased taxation and the possible abandonment of costly and controversial programmes such as Trident, identity cards and the war in Afghanistan".

Budget squeeze

That consensus view seems to be gathering pace, at least if you look at responses to Holyrood's investigation into how the budget squeeze should be handled.

Raising tax, of course, is a very limited option for MSPs. And if the Treasury fails to meet its economic growth forecasts, as many believe it will do, Professor David Bell - of Stirling University, and specialist adviser to the Holyrood finance committee - this weekend told the Politics Show Scotland that the cuts could go as deep as 20%.

The Sunday Times this week has a very rough totting up of the plans to cut jobs across the public sector so far under way, or at least being publicly discussed. It reaches a total of 225,000, and that's without paying much attention to Scotland.

Professor Bell has written one of two significant contributions to the committee's deliberations on the budget squeeze which have just been published.

In one, the Centre for Public Policy for Regions at Glasgow University offers advice drawn from comparable "fiscal consolidations" in Finland, Canada, Sweden and Ireland.

They highlight the role of leadership "in order to make the unpalatable seem inevitable". Cross-party consensus also helps. But to win public trust in the process, the report argues information on public spending has to be freely available. If it's distorted or concealed, trust in the process of implementing cuts can be badly harmed.

And it's pointed out that much important information about outputs from public services is not so much concealed as non-existent.

Slash capital spending

They say international experience points to two big choices. One is whether to cut capital or revenue spending. In the 1990s, when the Finns successfully steered their way out of a trough, they deliberately protected capital, on the basis that it would be vital to securing growth when it returned.

The UK, it's pointed out, has inadvertantly tended to slash capital spending when times get tough, because that's the easy thing to do politically. And that's how it's looking again.

The other factor that helps get countries out of crises is some external source of discipline. That was the International Monetary Fund in 1976, when it bailed out Britain.

The debate about Greece's dire position at present is: who applies the discipline, and how to make it stick? Will the European Central Bank be given the tools to apply iron resolve, or will it descend into a Council of Ministers' fudge?

Professor Bell looks most closely at the other big choice the CPPR raises - between universal and targeted services.

He reflects criticism that has been aimed at Holyrood administrations for extending free care and bus travel for the elderly, free prescriptions, free bridge tolls, the abolition of the student endowment, and so on, as helping out those more affluent people who might otherwise be able to pay.

These are "at least partially regressive", and once universal benefits are offered, they are "extremely difficult to withdraw".

Holyrood U-turns

Professor Bell's suggestions are technical, but with radical implications. One is for a ban on legislation that is open-ended in cost, meaning new laws must define ways in which costs can be capped.

Another is for all new laws to show how they affect richer and poorer communities in Scotland. That would cover new laws. In the meantime, he says the depth of the cuts, and the tight timetable, mean the Scottish government has to reconsider more means testing.

And as Holyrood has committed to more universal benefits than the rest of the UK, it would have more U-turns to perform.