Members of Unite at housing charity St Mungo’s Broadway have overwhelmingly voted to take seven days of strike action following disputes over changes imposed by a new senior management team.
The trade union Unite has said staff will not stand for the changes, which the union says will downgrade salaries for new starters and could affect existing staff involved in restructures. The changes have been imposed by a new management team, imported from Broadway following the merger between St Mungo’s and Broadway in April of this year.
Broadway’s chief executive, Howard Sinclair, became chief executive of the new organisation when Charles Fraser, chief executive of St Mungo’s, stepped down after 20 years. Unite said that its members are “furious” over changes which it says “sideline the union entirely”.
Nicky Marcus, regional officer at Unite, said: “The sheer arrogance of Howard Sinclair, the new CEO, is simply intolerable to our members. Our members have given us a clear mandate that they will not stand for these significantly detrimental changes.
"Burying their heads in the sand, stating that they don’t accept that we are in dispute, is simply not good enough. This will be demonstrated on Friday when almost 600 staff walk out for a week.
“Our members feel so strongly that have voted to strike for a full seven days; losing a whole week's pay because they insist that the changes imposed by this management are wrong; wrong for the staff, wrong for the organisation and wrong for the future of the vulnerable people in their care.”
Of the 370 Unite members who voted in the ballot that closed last Tuesday, 355 voted to strike, while only 15 voted not to. Marcus said today that the number of St Mungo’s Broadway staff that are members of Unite has now risen to 625 in the last couple of weeks, out of around 1,300 employees.
Marcus added: “You don’t join a union before a strike unless you want to strike”.
Sinclair has said that he is “disappointed” in the decision to strike and is putting contingency plans in place to ensure services are kept running during the strike.
He said: “I am obviously disappointed that industrial action will be going ahead, given that we are not cutting jobs or the pay or terms and conditions of existing staff. I am willing, as I always have been, to meet with Union representatives to discuss alternative suggestions to managing the challenges we face.
“Our priority remains providing services of the highest quality for the increasing numbers of clients we are seeing, within the ever tighter economic environment. We are making contingency plans to keep services running with minimum impact on our clients.”
The members voted to take seven days of strike action, starting at 08:00 on Friday 14 October.
