Museum workers in the UVW union voted by 96 percent for strike action (Pic: @UVWunion on Twitter).
Security guards at the Science and Natural History Museums in London are set to strike for three days from Friday of next week.
The UVW union members voted by 96 percent for strikes.
Outsourcer Wilson James—which employs the security guards—offered to increase their pay from £11.95 an hour to £13.15.
But the UWV members have called the pay rise “too little too late”.
The guards are demanding £16 an hour, full sick pay from day one and one more week of annual leave.
Security guard Kingsley Ampofo said, “Every member of the museum’s workforce, including the directors, have received a decent rise in their wages. So why not the security guards who work their socks off to ensure the safety of both people and property?”
Wilson James made over £7 million in after tax profit last year.
Tensions are rising in the dispute over Scottish local government pay.
The Scottish government last week announced it would implement its pitiful 3.6 percent pay offer.
That’s despite Unison, the largest union in local government, overwhelmingly rejecting the offer.
Ministers said that support for the deal from the smaller Unite and GMB unions was enough for them.
Unison members at schools in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, are now set to strike for two weeks. The union now intends to ballot the rest of the country too.
The walkout is set to begin on Monday of next week and will affect 50 schools and early years centres, forcing them to close.
Thousands of Unison union members, including waste and recycling workers as well as education staff, turned down the national offer. That offer was for a £1,292 or 3.6 percent pay rise—whichever was higher.
Unison’s Perth and Kinross branch secretary Stuart Hope said, “Employees are taking this first stand on behalf of all local government workers because they’ve seen a decade of pay cuts and they see other sectors being offered deals of greater value.
“The Scottish government needs to understand that council staff need more than platitudes. Ministers must tackle the severe decline in local government funding and start to value councils.”
Workers in Ammanford in west Wales, employed by Pullmaflex car seat producers, have won a pay rise after voting to strike.
Some 200 workers, who are members of the Unite union, will receive a pay rise of 8 percent if they are on the shop floor, and 4.8 percent for other roles.
Pay will also go up by 2.5 percent in January next year, and then again in April.
Bosses at Pullmaflex caved-in to workers’ demands after they voted for strikes.
In the nearby Gestamp factory, where workers make metal for car brands including Nissan and BMW, workers have voted for strikes after a derisory pay offer from their bosses.
Strikes dates are yet to be announced.
Food workers at Oscar Mayer’s factory in Wrexham, north Wales, are battling bosses’ attempts to break their all-out strike.
Over 500 Unite union members were supposed to end their strikes last week, but extended them after Oscar Mayer refused to enter into negotiations.
Workers began an indefinite strike in September after Oscar Mayer tried to fire and rehire them on a new contract.
It would cut workers’ wages by up to £3000 per year. Bosses are now using agency labour to break the strike.
The Job&Talent employment agency, which outsources labour for Oscar Mayer, has tried to replace striking workers with temporary labour.
Stagecoach bus drivers in Inverness are balloting for strikes after they rejected an “unacceptable” pay offer.
The Unite union workers overwhelmingly rejected the Stagecoach bosses’ offer of a
2.5 percent increase from January and 3 percent from July of next year. Stagecoach reported after-tax profits of £1.71m in 2023.
Campaign group Homes4All held a successful Zoom meeting last Saturday featuring Peter Apps on the lessons of the Grenfell tragedy.
Apps is the contributing editor of Inside Housing and author of the book, Show Me the Bodies—How We Let Grenfell Happen.
In the meeting, Apps discussed the findings and impact of the Grenfell Inquiry following the Phase 2 report.
He went to the core of the political and corporate interests responsible.
The murderous failings, revealed in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire, laid bare everything rotten with housing policy and the resulting damage and disregard to people’s lives.
Listen to the meeting at tinyurl.com/Apps1024
IT workers at Newham council in east London are balloting for strikes.
Unite union members are fighting council bosses’ new business plans, which require 130 workers to fulfil.
But Newham council’s IT department has just 45 full time workers due to wages and conditions being “poorer than elsewhere”. Voting will close on 29 October.
Energy workers at Altrad Services in Cumbria were set for another round of strikes over pay from Thursday.
The Unite union members are responsible for access and maintenance of the Fellside site, which produces steam for the nearby Sellafield nuclear plant. They planned to walk out from Thursday until Tuesday next week—and from 24 to 29 October.
The workers who make Tetley’s Tea in Teesside, north east England, have escalated their strikes over pay.
Around 150 GMB union members working at Tata Consumer products, which makes Tetley Tea, walked out on Thursday of last week.
They previously walked out on 4 October.
Bus workers rejected an offer and came back out
New report demolishes fossil fuel industry lies
