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Staff at East of England landlord to strike for nine days over pay
Staff at a housing association in the East of England will begin a nine-say strike over pay later this month.
Nearly 60 workers at Freebridge Community Housing, based in King’s Lynn, were balloted by Unite the Union to take part in industrial action.
The 7,000-home landlord offered employees a 5% pay increase and a £500 non-consolidated payment, Unite claimed. The union argued that this represents a real-terms pay cut with retail price index inflation at 10.7%.
The striking workers are responsible for providing home maintenance repairs and estate services, Freebridge said.
Many of the workers, who perform roles including cleaning, are paid little more than the national minimum wage and are struggling to pay their bills, Unite said.
The nine strike days are 21, 29, 30 and 31 August and on 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 September.
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Sharon Graham, general secretary at Unite, said: “Freebridge is in robust financial health and should be paying these workers properly. Unite will not stand for attacks on our members’ jobs, pay or conditions and the workforce at Freebridge will receive their union’s total support.”
Anita Jones, chief executive of Freebridge Community Housing, said: “We are, of course, very disappointed that we have been unable to reach agreement with some colleagues on the pay award for this year.
“We strongly feel that the offer, which has resulted in pay awards ranging from 6% to 7% non-consolidated and targeted to ensure our lower-paid roles receive the most support, is fair and reasonable, and absolutely recognises that our colleagues have been impacted by the cost of living increases alongside our customers.
“This year’s award comes on the back of significant adjustments to our colleagues on lowest paid salaries last year, with some colleagues seeing increases of 9%.”
Ms Jones also pointed out that the landlord’s salaries are externally benchmarked and are paid at the market median, which she described as “appropriate for a business such as ours”.
Ms Jones added: “Any surplus goes back into our tenants’ homes and communities. We have a moral obligation to ensure that we balance a fair offer to our colleagues, against investment in our tenants’ homes and services. We value all of our team and demonstrate that in the generous wider package that we offer.
“We do understand that this will be very inconvenient for some customers and wholeheartedly apologise. During this time, we will continue to provide an emergency and urgent repairs service, as well as to respond to the needs of our most vulnerable customers. We appreciate everyone’s understanding and co-operation during this period of industrial action”.
Freebridge is not the only landlord to be affected by strike action this year.
In February, around 100 staff at Magenta Living held a series of week-long strikes over the housing association’s new policy on how it expects workers to deal with asbestos.
The boss of St Mungo’s voiced her surprise at workers at the homelessness charity in June after they launched an indefinite strike action over pay.
In the same month, hundreds of union members at the Housing Ombudsman and the Regulator of Social Housing held a week-long strike over pay and workload.
