Rotherham Gravediggers vote for strike action over pay
Rotherham’s cemetery grounds maintenance staff, including gravediggers have voted resoundingly in favour of taking industrial action up to and including strike action as they ramp up the pressure on their employer in their efforts to achieve fair pay as the double impact of inflation and interest rate hikes bite deep.
82% of staff who work on the contract have voted in favour of industrial action on a turnout that exceeds 90%. This gives them a legal mandate to take industrial action from the beginning of August.
These workers are employed by Glendale Grounds Maintenance, a private contractor who delivers the crematoria service under contract from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. They are all members of the public service Trade Union UNISON.
Most of the workers involved are paid at or close to the national minimum wage, and have lost out significantly on pay since being transferred out of direct council employment over a decade ago. They are paid 10% less than they would be had the council retained their service provision in-house. Rotherham council is an accredited Real Living Wage employer, yet they do not currently insist that their contractors also meet this standard.
The RMBC service is contracted out to a company called Dignity, but is then subcontracted to Glendale Grounds Maintenance. The workers delivering the Rotherham contract are all UNISON members.
UNISON Regional Organiser, Dan Wood said:
These UNISON members are seeking an increase of 10% on their basic pay, overtime and allowances. They are not asking for anything they do not deserve. Even a rise of this scale would barely be sufficient to re-establish pay parity, after a decade of lagging behind, with the lowest paid RMBC employees. Other Local Authorities have retained their essential crematorium services in-house, and their staff have not fallen behind on pay in the same way. We remain in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, the effects of which are of course felt most acutely by the lowest paid workers in society.
There is no justification for running council services in Rotherham to be run on a two-tier workforce. Why should these outsourced staff be treated, and paid, as second class citizens. The council know the outsourcing experiment has failed to provide for the people of Rotherham, as well as these workers, but as a result of a previous decision to award a 35 year contract, they are stuck with levying fines and charges against contractors for failures in service provision. UNISON understand that these charges amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds over recent months alone.
We have not announced any dates for industrial action yet, as we want to give Glendale’s a window to finally agree to meet with us and negotiate constructively and in good faith, now that they are absolutely clear about the strength of feeling that exists in their workforce. The ball is in their court for now, but we are fully prepared to utilise this mandate to deliver the best possible outcome for our members on pay.
UNISON Rotherham Branch Secretary, Ruth Askwith said:
All the affected staff are members of UNISON. Obviously they do not want to take industrial action of any kind, but they are at the end of their tether and something has to give. I have offered many times to meet with the management of Glendales to seek a negotiated resolution to this dispute, but so far the company have refused to engage at all. They refused to even respond to our letters until we reached the point of moving to an industrial action ballot. Even then, they have reneged on their first offer to meet without following through. Instead they have now attempted to impose conditions before they would even talk to us.
UNISON do not believe that Rotherham council should be awarding publicly funded contracts to companies who show themselves as either incapable or disinterested in treating their workforce with any kind of respect. I share the disappointment and anger of our members with the response of the company to date. Our members have the full support of the whole of UNISON.
