Leeds refuse staff strike after counting cost of equal pay settlement

01 November 2007

Six hundred refuse workers in Leeds downed tools last week after learning that their salaries could be reduced by up to £3,000 a year, to equalise pay.

The unofficial action last Thursday (26 October) was seen by the Yorkshire Evening Post as ‘the first action in a potential confrontation involving thousands of council employees’.

This was after a negotiated pay agreement to equalise pay for workers at the city council which leaves 2,000 facing pay cuts. But Unison, speaking to Surveyor, said it would be telling its members that it was ‘the best-possible agreement we can get by negotiation’.

Leonie Sharp, regional Unison officer, stressed that 11,000 predominantly female workers stood to gain, and only 2,000 male workers might have their pay cut. The latter – including refuse collectors and street sweepers – ‘have been receiving pay in excess of what the job-evaluation process says they should be getting’.

The pay of the male manual workers would not be cut for three years, because the unions had negotiated pay protection. And Sharp claimed that the 2,000 might receive no pay cut, either, because local government pay settlements over the next three years cancelled out the planned reduction, or because their jobs were redesigned to justify higher pay. ‘These jobs could be enriched so that they require new skills,’ she said.

Refuse collectors and street sweepers could be charged with identifying service improvements, such as where there was demand for untapped recycling, or become the ‘eyes and the ears of the council,’ finding drug-taking hotspots.

Unison, GMB and the Transport and General Workers unions will now ballot their members on the negotiated pay agreement. The Local Government Employers has argued that there are ‘no alternatives’ to covering the £1bn ongoing extra annual cost of equalising pay than to cut the wages of one-fifth of male workers (Surveyor, 15 March).

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Leeds refuse staff strike after counting cost of equal pay settlement

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