‘Enough is enough’

Blue chip finance companies, serviced by Capita, will be hit as nearly 1,000 life and pension workers stage a 24-hour strike today (June 16) in a dispute over ‘poverty pay’.

More than 920 life and pensions workers at Capita across the UK have been on strike for 24-hours from just past midnight today.

Unite said that the strike would inevitably lead to a disruption of service to Capita’s blue chip clients, including Abbey Life, Aviva, Guardian, Met Life, Prudential and Royal London.

“Our members are fed up to the back teeth by enduring poverty pay, while Capita accrues large profits on the back of their hard work,” said Unite national officer for finance Dominic Hook.

“The strike will hit the services to a number of blue chip companies which may wish to put pressure on Capita bosses to come to a fair settlement.

“If Capita does not enter into constructive talks, more strikes are definitely on the cards, given the depth of anger of our members.”

The strike comes on top of an overtime ban since June 3 and the on-call ban and standby ban, which started on May 27.
The Capita workers are based in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Manchester, Reading and Stirling.

Unite regional officer Kevin McAdam, who represents striking workers in Belfast, where staff provide core hub services for Met Life as well as support for Prudential, condemned Capita management.

“Capita management’s failure to make a reasonable pay offer to address poverty pay stands in stark contrast with the recent sixteen per cent pay increase they awarded the Group CEO, Andy Parker, and the nine percent increase they gave to the Group Finance Director, Nick Greatorex,” he said.

“They now need to get serious and make their workforce a reasonable pay increase offer in order to avoid further escalation in this unnecessary dispute.”

The dispute follows a ‘derisory’ pay offer which would have resulted in a real terms pay cut for 75 per cent of staff. Capita had proposed a 1.5 per cent ‘pay pot’ which would have been distributed to staff through a flawed and opaque performance-related grading system, which only serves to divorce pay increases from the cost of living.

“Profit-hungry Capita bosses are ducking-and-diving to squeeze our members so the pips squeak with the flawed ‘pay pot’ proposal  – and now the staff have said that ‘enough is enough’,” Hook said.