At a full council meeting in May, councillors voted in favour of a motion put forward by Labour councillor Patrick McGlinchey, who said that the existing management structure of the nurseries should remain, with dedicated heads of centre in each nursery.
All the maintained nurseries in West Dunbartonshire are called early education and childcare centres and are managed by a head of centre.
However, finance spokesman Craig McLaughlin of the SNP argued that the nurseries might have to close in the future if cuts are not made now.
He said, 'Cuts are coming ... if you don't start taking these decisions now, in a year or two years' time, we will be closing the centres because we won't have the money to service them.'
The vote was split on the proposals, with ten councillors on each side. However, Provost Denis Agnew's casting vote was in favour of the motion put forward by Patrick McGlinchey.
Speaking to Nursery World after the council meeting, Mr McGlinchey said, 'The council wanted to make a whole layer of management redundant. The centres were going to go in with the schools and become classes.
'However, primary school headteachers already have a heavy workload and do not have the specialist knowledge of early education, which is a different ball game.
'Other local authorities in Scotland are adapting the model of early education that we have in West Dunbartonshire, so to amalgamate the early education centres with primary schools would have been a backward step. I think saying that the nurseries may have to close is just scaremongering.'
Angela Nicoll, branch secretary of public sector union Unison, who is also a nursery nurse, said, 'Not replacing the heads of centres would have been a very big loss, plus it would have meant there would been no career path for the nursery nurses.
'I am really happy that we have saved these jobs, which will ensure that we maintain the quality of the provision.'
Stuart Patterson of teaching union the EIS added, 'These cuts were opposed by the unions. The implications for our members were that they would have to take over the runnning of nursery schools, and primary headteachers would not have welcomed the extra workload.'
