Dear colleagues
On 1 September, Unite members at St Mungo’s met to consider management’s offers to settle the dispute.
Members decided:
– To accept the offer on mileage. This means an increase to 56p per mile for cars and 27p per mile for motorcycles. This is to be reviewed at the end of six months. Following further discussion, management have also agreed an increase to 26p per mile for bicycles.
– To welcome management’s intention to pay part of the 2022/23 pay increase early, but not to accept this as sufficient to make up for the real terms pay cut imposed in 2021/22.
As determined by the members’ meeting, we are now pursuing the dispute on the issue of wages alone. Stage 2 of the Avoidance of Disputes procedure has been activated and we will be meeting Rebecca Sycamore and other members of St Mungo’s leadership team on 22 September to see whether a strike can be avoided.
St Mungo’s management are still claiming that St Mungo’s ‘cannot afford’ to meet our requests on pay. We don’t think this is correct, for the following reasons:
- If the national negotiators at the NJC had agreed a sensible pay increase based on the rate of inflation in 2021/22, St Mungo’s would have had to pay it. There is no real doubt that it would have been able to do so.
- In meetings with management, we have been given hazy and contradictory information about organisational finances. When we have asked questions about the numbers, we have been told that clarification will be provided later but this has not happened.
- We have been asking to see St Mungo’s management accounts for six months. This request has been variously ignored, misunderstood or refused without a reason.
In short, we know that St Mungo’s can afford to improve on its offer. If we have to call a strike to achieve this, we will.
If there are any questions, please contact Deputy Convenor David Oladele or myself.
In solidarity
Jacob Sanders
Convenor
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