NI Water workers wage win

A dispute among NI Water workers, which began over the Christmas season, has come to an end after members officially accepted an increased pay offer on Wednesday (May 20), which was just recently signed off by the finance minister.

 
The new two-year pay deal provides increases backdated to August 2014 which will more than cover the additional costs associated with pension reform. It exceeds the Stormont pay cap and will provide for 4 per cent increases at the bare minimum.

 
Unite industrial officer Joanne McWilliams confirmed that workers across the Water Group of Trade Unions had agreed to the final offer by NI Water management.

 
“The deal has been endorsed by a large majority of members across all unions,” she said. “The deal won for our members applies to both the industrial and non-industrial workforce within NI Water and came on the back of several weeks of industrial action in the New Year caused by management intransigence.”

 
As UNITElive reported in January, NI water workers, some of the lowest paid workers in the UK, began a work-to-rule action that disrupted water supplies for thousands of homes.

 
McWilliams called the action a “last resort” to “defend our members’ pay.”

 
She said, “Its success demonstrates the extent to which NI Water is dependent on the goodwill and overtime of its workforce.

 
“The pay increases exceed the Stormont pay cap and commence the process of addressing the issue of low pay in NI Water,” McWilliams added.

 
But, she noted, even after the increase “our members remain among the lowest paid utility workers in the UK and Ireland.”

 
McWilliams went on to say that Unite is committed to the efficient operation of NI water as a public body meeting the needs of the community, but, she said, “this will not be achieved by punishing low-paid workers who keep the service operational.”

 
McWilliams warned that the NI Executive’s “miserly policies” in relation to pay for industrial public sector workers could mean further industrial action to be taken by low-paid workers in other public bodies “with the aim of defending their standards of living.”