United Kingdom - Unions angered at local government pay freeze - January 21, 2010

The three unions organising municipal employees, UNISON, Unite and GMB, have reacted angrily to the proposal by local government employers to freeze the pay of their 1.6 million employees. The unions had submitted a claim for a 2.5% increase, with a minimum increase of UKP 500 (Euro 577) and are particularly annoyed by the employers’ failure even to negotiate before announcing their plans for a pay freeze. UNISON Head of Local Government, Heather Wakefield, said: “Our members are already covering posts left vacant by wide-spread redundancies. 75% of the workforce are women so this is an outright attack on women's pay.”

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/335 http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=1701

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter, which presents up-to-date information on collective bargaining developments across Europe. 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 at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009. All rights reserved. The ETUI is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. The ETUI is financially supported by the European Community. The European Community is not responsible for any use made of the information contained in this news section.