{"id":13675,"date":"2017-10-04T15:36:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T14:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=13675"},"modified":"2017-10-04T15:36:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T14:36:40","slug":"navy-faces-choppy-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=13675","title":{"rendered":"Navy faces \u00e2\u20ac\u0098choppy waters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The movement of Royal Navy vessels in and out of five UK ports could be severely disrupted, as tug boat crew ballot for strike action in a national pay dispute.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Portsmouth, the home base of the navy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new prestige \u00c2\u01413.1bn aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, the navy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest-ever surface warship, could be affected.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nUnite, which represents the 350 tug boat crew employed by Serco Marine Services, said the other four ports that could affected are at Greenock, Faslane, Kyle in Scotland and Devonport.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Voting papers for strike action will start being delivered from Friday (October 6) to the tug boat crew, who work for the company on the Ministry of Defence contract in the five ports. It will close on Friday, October 20.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The ballot for strike action, follows an overwhelming rejection of the imposition of a 1.8 per cent pay rise for 2016\/7 and 2.2 per cent for 2017\/8.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite national officer for the docks Bobby Morton said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf our members vote for strike action it will create choppy waters industrially and be highly disruptive as naval vessels need the tugs to help navigate them to open water.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSerco Marine Services has imposed a derisory pay award when inflation is taking off \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the retail price index (RPI) is standing at 3.9 per cent currently.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe maths doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t add up for our members who are struggling with rising household bills,&#8221; he added. &#8220;They need to be recognised for the skilled work they do in all weathers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe only way to settle the dispute is for the company to withdraw the unilateral imposition of the pay award and return to the negotiating table with Unite for constructive talks.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The movement of Royal Navy vessels in and out of five UK ports could be severely disrupted, as tug boat crew ballot for strike action in a national pay dispute. &nbsp; &nbsp; Portsmouth, the home base of the navy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new prestige \u00c2\u01413.1bn aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, the navy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest-ever surface warship, could be affected. &nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[710,437,679],"wps_subtitle":"Tug boat crew to vote on strike action ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13675"}],"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=13675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13676,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13675\/revisions\/13676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}