Staff at Action for Children could go on strike if an ongoing pay dispute is not resolved, one of the staff trade unions has warned.

The Unison trade union said management at the charity is proposing a pay freeze for all staff as well as changes to redundancy and employment policies to make it cheaper to sack or redeploy staff.

Meanwhile, the union, which represents around 600-650 staff at the charity, has held an informal ballot which found that around 80 per cent would potentially be willing to strike.

Mike Short, a national officer at Unison, told civilsociety.co.uk that although the pay freeze would include senior management, the overall offer is not something the union could accept.

“Mediation talks with the charity and ACAS only produced small progress.

“Their offer was improved slightly but we’re still not in a place where they’ve made an offer that’s anything like what we can recommend to members to accept.

“We’re just pondering next moves now, but we’ve suggested that in early September we’re minded to initiate formal strike proceedings if there isn’t an improved offer.

“We just wanted to give it a few weeks to see if we can sort something out because for us industrial action is a very last resort.”

According to Short, a similar, if not larger, number of staff are represented by the Unite trade union. He added that it is unclear how many staff Action for Children has in total, but said the number is between 4,000 and 5,000.

Unite could not be contacted at the time of going to press.

“Huge challenges”

In a statement, the charity said: “In common with every charity in the country, Action for Children faces huge challenges in the current economic climate, combined with an increase in demand for our services.

“Our over-riding concern will always be to provide the best possible services to the vulnerable and neglected children and young people who rely on us.

“We are in ongoing negotiation with our union partners and will continue our commitment to doing everything we can to help all our staff as we move forward.”

Update 30/08/11: Action for Children has since contacted civilsociety.co.uk to deny that there will be a pay freeze.

A spokeswoman said: “Staff, who are eligible to, will continue to receive an annual incremental pay increase, but there will be no inflationary increase.”