Staff at the housing charity Shelter will strike next week in protest at changes to pay for frontline staff.
The union Unite announced yesterday that 400 of its members will walk out over the proposed pay scales for three days, starting on Tuesday 16 December.
It also said 70 members of staff have joined the union since the beginning of November.
According to the union, the changes could lead to pay cuts of up to £5,000 for new starters and £3,000 for existing staff.
Unite regional officer Peter Storey said: “Shelter’s frontline support and advice workers are the lifeblood of the charity and deserve better than pay cuts while those with huge salaries at the top see their pay protected.
“Cutting pay for some of our lowest paid staff is simply not necessary. Shelter is in a healthy financial position and management need to get back around the table to negotiate a fair settlement.”
Staff were balloted last week and 69.2 per cent of those taking part, voted to strike, according to Unite.
According to the union, the new pay proposals risk creating a two-tiered workforce of frontline and non-frontline staff. It also warned that it could lead to a “cut rate organisation”.
“Our members are fearful that ‘cut rate pay’ will lead to a ‘cut rate organisation’ as managers struggle to recruit experienced replacements on the new lower rates of pay,” said Storey.
Some 400 Shelter employees are members of Unite, comprising of almost a third of its total workforce of 1,300 including shops staff.
Shelter said that only "a small proportion" of staff had voted in favour of strike action, but the charity had developed contingency plans to ensure there was "as little impact as possible on the services we provide".
Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter said he was “disappointed” by the strike action, in a statement first issued earlier this month.
“At Shelter we aim to pay a broadly typical market salary across all roles and we benchmark salaries regularly to help us achieve this,” he said. “In doing so we have found we currently pay staff working in advice and support well above the salary for similar roles elsewhere, which with funding cuts and more competition for donors we cannot sustain.
“This leaves us with a simple but painful choice: keep the higher pay levels, cut our services and make some roles redundant, or maintain the number of people we help and reduce salaries for new staff. We always strive to be the best employer we can be, but in this instance we feel we have to put our ability to help those who need it first.”
Shelter’s main offices in London, Glasgow and Sheffield as well as smaller ones in cities such as Manchester and Bristol will be affected by the three day strike, which starts at 00:01 hours Tuesday 16 December and concludes at 23:59 hours on Thursday 18 December.
