Three hundred bin men (and women), street cleaners, recycling staff and more, backed by their GMB union reps, refused to leave their depot today after a meeting with management in which the final details of Brighton and Hove City Council’s ‘pay modernisation’ scheme were outlined.
The scheme, which applies to the 8,000-strong workforce of Brighton and Hove City Council, could mean that refuse and recycling staff at Hollingdean depot lose up to £4,000 a year. Today’s sitting-in workers are demanding that the assault on pay is scrapped. They will not ‘even consider working’ until Council Leader Jason Kitcat and the Chief Exec address them in the depot.
Today’s refusal to work comes after months of negotiation and consultation between the council and the GMB union during which, GMB branch rep Holly Smith states, council management ‘haven’t budged.’
Instead the consultation process has apparently resulted in claims from the council that they will sack all staff facing the proposed changes and re-employ them ‘on a worse contract, without compensation’ if staff refuse to accept the new terms. There was also dismay amongst staff that the council, a recently accredited living wage employer, would not keep this commitment to its staff.
A spokesperson for the Green Party councillors was clear that ‘the living wage will not be affected’ by the ‘pay modernisation’ process, and that the entirety of the changes were ‘not about saving money.’ On the £4,000 pay cuts, Lianne made it clear that ‘this is not the average to be lost. It’s difficult, but that is a worst-case scenario.’
To the occupying workers, however, averages are irrelevant and the worst-case scenario for at least some will have a stark and devastating impact on their take-home pay. And while Chief Executive Penny Thompson has promised compensation to affected staff, at present the specifics of such compensation remain unclear. Holly Smith suggested this was likely to be at a maximum one years worth of lost pay: ‘and then what?’
Recycling Workers Strike Against Green Council in Brighton
). This, as well as the stance of Green councillers across the UK, is simply proof of the Green Party's bourgeois anti-worker nature. The same shit has happened in Bristol where Green councillers voted for austerity measures. Good luck to the striking workers in Brighton!
