{"id":10341,"date":"2016-10-27T16:02:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T15:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=10341"},"modified":"2016-10-27T16:02:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T15:02:03","slug":"fujitsu-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=10341","title":{"rendered":"Fujitsu fight"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Up to 300 workers at IT giant Fujitsu in Manchester will be staging three days of strike action starting next week in a dispute over pay, pensions and job security.<\/p>\n

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The members of Unite claim that the company has been cutting pay rates for years, despite very healthy profits and very large increases in senior management pay.<\/p>\n

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Unite said that Fujitsu is failing to address a significant gender pay gap and refusing to become a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098living wage\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 accredited employer.<\/p>\n

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Fujitsu – Responsible Business of the Year 2015 and sponsors of the Responsible Business Gala – has also benefited from a significant retrospective cut in pensions accrued by its older workers, while at the same time paying an effective tax rate of 0 per cent.<\/p>\n

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The industrial action comes after the recent announcement that Fujitsu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plans to axe 1,800 jobs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c over 18 per cent of its UK workforce.<\/p>\n

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The company – which employs about 10,000 people in the UK, delivering IT services to government and leading companies -\u00c2\u00a0has major sites at\u00c2\u00a0Belfast, Bracknell, Crewe, Londonderry\/Derry, London, Manchester, Solihull, Stevenage, Wakefield and Warrington.<\/p>\n

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The discontinuous strike action starts with a 24-hour stoppage commencing at 00:01 on Tuesday 1 November. This is timed to coincide with the launch of the new \u00e2\u20ac\u0098living wage\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 which highlights Fujitsu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s refusal to become an accredited \u00e2\u20ac\u0098living wage\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 employer.<\/p>\n

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The action will be followed by a 48-hour stoppage on Monday 7 November.<\/p>\n

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This is scheduled to mark when women working for Fujitsu would be, on average, working for free, if they were paid the same hourly rate as their male colleagues.<\/p>\n

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Unite has calculated that female staff are on average paid 16 per cent less than their male colleagues. It comes just before the Fawcett Society\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Equal Pay Day (10 November) which highlights the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gender pay gap.<\/p>\n

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Members are also fighting for a pay deal; over the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response to retrospective cuts in pensions for older staff; and for job security.<\/p>\n

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Fujitsu staff across the UK are worried about the job cuts and are angry that the company has announced the termination of their works council which will reduce their voice at this crucial time.<\/p>\n

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The strikes will be accompanied by a continuous work to rule, withdrawal of goodwill and ban on overtime from 00:01 on Monday 31 October.<\/p>\n

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Unite regional officer Sharon Hutchinson said: \u00e2\u20ac\u015bFujitsu is a highly profitable and successful company \u00e2\u20ac\u201c its main UK subsidiary made \u00c2\u014185.6m profit last year and continues to be highly profitable.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is taking advantage of its loyal workforce by attacking their pay, pensions and jobs. They deserve to be treated better than this.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe Fujitsu management needs to enter into a constructive dialogue on the issues that cause our members serious concern \u00e2\u20ac\u201c otherwise more industrial action is on the cards.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe expect that the action already announced will hit customer service quite severely.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Up to 300 workers at IT giant Fujitsu in Manchester will be staging three days of strike action starting next week in a dispute over pay, pensions and job security.   The members of Unite claim that the company has been cutting pay rates for years, despite very healthy profits and very large increases in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[550,145],"wps_subtitle":"Manchester workers set to strike","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10341"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10349,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10341\/revisions\/10349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}