{"id":12961,"date":"2017-08-08T14:35:27","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T13:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=12961"},"modified":"2017-08-08T14:35:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T13:35:27","slug":"paltry-pay-offer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=12961","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Paltry&#8217; pay offer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Unite members at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant are set to hold an industrial action ballot over a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098completely unacceptable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 1.5 per cent pay offer that has been imposed by management.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite Sellafield shop stewards at a meeting on Friday (August 4) decided to go ahead with the ballot of the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2,000 members at the Cumbria site. Members can expect ballot papers to drop onto their doormats later this month.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sellafield Ltd &#8211; a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) company &#8211; has imposed a 1.5 per cent pay award from next month, backdated to April 1.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite regional officer Graham Williams said today (August 8), \u00e2\u20ac\u015bLast year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pay award was one percent, but members agreed to take only 0.25 per cent in order to keep existing apprentices on an agreed rate.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLow pay awards have been the order of the day for some time at Sellafield with the well-founded suspicion that this award dovetails with the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s harsh pay restraint policies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOnce cherished free collective bargaining is now a myth in the decommissioning industry \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and this paltry pay offer is completely unacceptable,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThere has been a sustained erosion of pay, and terms and conditions in recent years including a proposed new pensions\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 package with reduced benefits and new starters employed on inferior conditions. The current regrading exercise would reduce craft pay by a minimum of \u00c2\u01415,000 a year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhen the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098benchmarking\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 exercise started, the management compared very skilled workers dealing with the maintenance of the nuclear plant with those employed in \u00e2\u20ac\u0098fried chicken\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 outlets and charity shop workers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThese ridiculous comparisons have now been dropped, but it demonstrated the contemptuous way that the bosses regard its highly trained and safety conscious workforce,&#8221; Williams argued.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe management now needs to come to the table and negotiate in a constructive manner, otherwise possible future industrial action could bring Sellafield to a halt.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unite members at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant are set to hold an industrial action ballot over a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098completely unacceptable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 1.5 per cent pay offer that has been imposed by management. &nbsp; Unite Sellafield shop stewards at a meeting on Friday (August 4) decided to go ahead with the ballot of the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2,000 members [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[773,127,437,275],"wps_subtitle":"Sellafield workers ballotted this month","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12961"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12963,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12961\/revisions\/12963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}