Six workers at a hostel run by the homelessness charity St Mungo’s are going on strike for a week over a dispute about pay and conditions.
The strike will start this Saturday at 3pm. St Mungo’s has said it will make arrangements to keep the 17-bed hostel in Hertfordshire open.
Unite regional officer, Nicky Marcus, says the strike follows St Mungo’s reneging on an agreement to assimilate the six staff, who have been working at the hostel under TUPE regulations, onto St Mungo’s terms and conditions at a total costs of £5,000 a year.
Marcus said: "No one cares more about the homeless adults using the North Herts Sanctuary shelter than our members and they are rightly worried about their clients as temperatures drop.
“However, they have been forced to take this action as the management has acted in bad faith. It promised to align the staff’s terms and conditions to that of the rest of the workforce – but then reneged at the last minute.
“Management is flatly denying any such agreement was made, but we have copies of emails and budgets used throughout months of negotiations, to the contrary.
“We believe that this is the first strike at St Mungo’s since it was set up in 1969 to help people sleeping rough off the streets.”
Marcus continued that the six workers planning to go on strike do more hours for less pay than other St Mungo’s workers. “They have less holiday entitlement and an outdated 'discretionary' sickness policy that St Mungo's management has used, outrageously, over the last year to refuse any sick pay, whatsoever, to workers undergoing cancer investigations and surgery.”
He continued: “Unfortunately, it seems that this is not a question of money, since it would cost St Mungo's just under £5,000 a year to do the right thing.
“Management's refusal to even discuss this with Unite seems to be more indicative of an insidious ‘corporatisation’ led by the new director of HR who seems hell bent on destroying the previously mutually productive relationship between Unite and St Mungo's.
“We urge Charles Fraser, the charity’s chief executive, with whom we have successfully negotiated countless issues over the years to contact us to negotiate a way forward.”
Elizabeth Harper, St Mungo’s regional director, said in a statement: "This is an issue relating to a 17-bed local service for homeless people that we have been working to modernise from an overnight-only service to a 24-hour service.
"We are disappointed to hear of the industrial action because we believe we have offered the six staff concerned a good deal. The service will remain open, however, and we will seek to minimise any impact on residents."
