Warrington lobby of council

Warrington lobby of council   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Warrington town hall unions lobby councillors

About 100 members of GMB, Unison and Unite lobbied the full council meeting at Warrington town hall on Monday evening, 2nd September.

The workers are intensely angry that after years of pay freezes and a 1% pay rise, the council is increasing the pay of senior managers by up to £10,000 a year.

One GMB member said that while many workers have had their pay cut by job ‘evaluation’, these senior posts have been filled by ‘slotting in’, that is without advert and interview.

It is not even clear to the council unions whether these top posts have gone through the agreed job evaluation process at all.

“And we are feeling the cuts – the fortnightly bin collection has increased the weight we have to lift, and in summer the smell was terrible”, commented a bin worker.

Another binman mentioned that workers were being recruited on agency contracts. “If they say a word out of place, they just don’t get phoned back. And another lad came from Princes Trust, and he worked all day on the bins in the heat, for no money – it’s wrong”.

Unison members spoke about the loss of jobs as day centres were closed and others spoke of smaller teams dealing with bigger workloads.

Andy Ford

This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 16 September 2013 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.