Planned strike action by cemetery maintenance staff in Rotherham, including gravediggers, has been put on hold after a pay offer from their employer, UNISON says today.
The workers involved in the dispute are predominantly paid at, or close to, the national minimum wage level. They have lost out significantly on pay since being transferred out of direct council employment over a decade ago.
The staff are employed by private contractor Glendale Grounds Maintenance, which delivers the crematoria service for Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC).
All the workers delivering the Rotherham contract are UNISON members.
They are currently paid 10% less than they would be had the council retained the service in-house. RMBC is an accredited real living wage employer, yet the authority does not currently insist the contractor delivering this contract meets the same standard.
The offer put forward by Glendale would mean the majority of workers would see their pay raised from the national minimum wage rate of £10.42 per hour to the real living wage (£10.90 per hour) from 1 September 2023, backdated to 1 April 2023. It would also see any update to the real living wage applied from 1 April 2024.
UNISON Rotherham recommends rejection of the offer, as it falls well below the initial claim of 10%, to bring it in line with the offer made to directly employed council staff. However, the current offer is worth only around 4.6% to most staff.
The union also says the offer provides no detail about pay for overtime, or weekend on-call rates.
UNISON Yorkshire and Humberside regional organiser Dan Wood said: “The employer is starting to engage in talks over pay, but the current offer falls well below what workers are asking for.
“It would still see outsourced workers paid considerably less than their equivalents employed by the council, after a decade of lagging behind.
“Outsourced staff are being treated and paid as second class citizens. There’s no justification for Rotherham’s council services to be run as a two-tier workforce.”
UNISON Rotherham branch secretary Ruth Askwith said: “Workers have a huge responsibility to make sure people’s loved ones are laid to rest in a dignified manner, in a well-maintained location.
“They deserve to be paid fairly, regardless of whether they’re employed directly by the council, or a contractor.
“The current pay offer falls well short of what workers asked for, and that’s why the recommendation is for it to be rejected.”
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