Unite members at Equinox Care have voted for two days of strike action over proposed pay cuts of up to £6,000 a year.

Two 24-hour strikes will be called on 29 May and 12 June after 98 per cent of the charity's Unite members voted for strike action. Last month staff at the Southwark-based substance missuse charity held a demonstration outside the board meeting to protest the proposals.

Regional officer at Unite the Union, Jamie Major, said: “Staff have had enough of the current leadership of Equinox Care.”

He added: “This action is a result of management’s failure to engage with its staff and their union representatives over the proposals to cut pay.” And he said the charity’s management had rejected an offer to go to the conciliation service Acas.

'Financial peril'

Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk Bill Puddicombe, chief executive of Equinox Care, denied the accusation that the organisation had failed to engage with staff, saying the charity had been through a "full 90-day consultation" and that "we engaged on a daily basis with senior staff going round talking to staff" about the proposals.

He said that the charity had actually extended the process but that the “proposal put forward (by Unite) was something that would have placed the organisation in financial peril”.

Puddicombe suggested that, considering the relative size of the charity, Unite was using this case as an “opportunity to make a political point about the reduced staff wages” in the sector.

Equinox Care has around 130 staff and claims that following a comparison of the salaries of its staff with other similar organisations, the charity was paying above the market rate for similar roles. In a bid to reduce the wage bill without making redundancies it suggested the wage cuts for those being paid above the market rate. Roughly three-quarters of staff will be affected, seeing their pay cut by between 1 per cent and 25 per cent. For those facing the biggest wage decrease, the cut will be spread out over several months.  

Puddicome pointed out that under the new proposals around a quarter of the staff, mostly those at the bottom end of the pay scale, are set to receive a pay increase and that the charity has “made a commitment to the living wage – and in fact we are paying substantially above that”.

 

Want access to all civilsociety.co.uk content? Subscribers gain access to all expert advice, analysis, surveys, special reports and the full archive of content from as little as £43.20 per year. Find out more...