United kingdom - Strong vote in British Gas strike ballot - March 23, 2010

In a ballot closing 23 March, GMB members working for British Gas have voted 82% in favour of strike action on a 61% turnout. GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny said, “We are giving British Gas a week to give us a constructive response. We want an independent inquiry into the profit-at-all-costs culture at British Gas.” Earlier the 8,000 employees involved, mainly engineering workers, gave 90% support for action in a consultative ballot. They are responding to threats from management to cut up to 25% of full-time equivalent staff working in non-customer facing roles.

English:http://l-r-c.org.uk/blog/post/strong-vote-in-gmb-british-gas-ballot/;

http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/british_gas_ballot.aspx

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.