Dear colleagues
It seems that we are headed for a strike.
The Unite team have worked hard to reach agreement with St Mungo’s senior management, but on Thursday we hit a brick wall when the executive team turned up to the Avoidance of Disputes Stage 2 meeting with no offer on pay whatsoever. That is not the way to avoid a dispute.
As at 31st March 2021 St Mungo’s cash reserves stood at £22.894 million. The reserve level recommended by St Mungo’s own trustees was in the range £14 to £18 million, so the cash balance was nearly £5 million more than the top end of the range. A large part of the reason for this additional surplus was the appallingly low payrise imposed by the NJC. The effective pay cut imposed in 2021/22 meant that there was money left over in St Mungo’s accounts, but many of their workers were struggling to make ends meet.
Within the last few weeks, the Government has announced a reduction of 1.25% in employers’ National Insurance contributions. That’s an unexpected windfall for St Mungo’s, which could be put towards a pay increase.
Your Unite representatives have said from the beginning that we are willing to make every effort to resolve this dispute. We will continue to do so. But we cannot negotiate without a serious negotiating partner.
The problem management is failing to address is the appalling pay award imposed at the NJC for 2021/22. A pay increase of only 1.75%, against a background of rocketing inflation, meant we suffered a pay cut in real terms that directly impacts on our standard of living.
That failure requires positive action to correct it. Even if the 2022/23 pay award is in line with inflation, we will still be worse off in real terms, because of the real-terms pay cut in 2021/22. St Mungo’s workers went above and beyond to continue serving our clients during the pandemic and do not deserve this insult.
The consequences for morale of this management approach are serious: the Pulse survey of November 2021 showed that the proportion of St Mungo’s workers who agreed with the statement
‘Given the opportunity, I would like to still be working for St Mungo`s in 12 months’
fell from 83% to 61% during 2021.
Even more alarmingly for senior management, the proportion who agreed with the statement
‘The Leadership Team (Directors and Executive Directors) provides effective leadership’
plummeted from 54% to just 36%.
Across the organisation, vacancies are at an unparalleled high as both recruitment and retention are undermined by low pay. Trying to fill the gap with agency workers is expensive – because of the fees charged by the agencies, an agency worker will almost certainly be more expensive than an employee paid at the rate Unite has requested.
We all know that this is harmful to our clients as well as wasteful. Short-term workers are unlikely to understand either the clients or the work as well as long-term employees. Hiring long-term agency workers isn’t just expensive for St Mungo’s but means that these agency workers are kept on precarious contracts, without access to the same benefits enjoyed by full time employees, so they should be brought in-house.
Management now have until 6 October to come up with a sensible offer. If not, the dispute will proceed to the third (and final) stage of the Avoidance of Disputes Procedure which involves the Trustees as well as the Chief Executive Officer.
We will continue to campaign for a decent wage increase and we continue to be ready to negotiate with management. But they need to do their homework and arrive at meetings prepared for a serious discussion. That is the way to restore the workforce’s confidence in the leadership team.
If you have any questions, please give me a ring.
Best wishes,
Jacob Sanders
Convenor
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