GMB members vote for Sellafield strike action
4 Sep 2017
More than three quarters of GMB members employed at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria have voted for strike action over their long-running pay dispute.
The decision by the site workers comes at the end of a three week ballot and follows an earlier rejection of a management pay offer in June by nearly 90% of those voting.
Union leaders said the 1.5% offer was substantially below current RPI of 3.6%. Senior organiser Chris Jukes added: “GMB members at Sellafield have had enough of the company imposing their pay upon them, it is no surprise they have voted by more than 3 to 1 to strike.”
GMB’s Sellafield Strike Committee will meet later this week to decide on the date for the first strike, which will be sometime this month.
Clearly, we are disappointed at the GMB’s ballot result
Sellafield Ltd statement
Commenting on behalf of Sellafield Ltd a spokeswoman said the company was disappointed by the response.
“We believe that a no-strings attached 1.5% pay increase is both fair and reasonable. We made that offer based on company affordability, and it was accepted by the Prospect Union which has collective bargaining rights for the largest group of our workforce,” she said.
“The GMB represents around 2,000 of our 10,500 strong workforce. Clearly, we are disappointed at the GMB’s ballot result, and will now start to finalise our arrangements to ensure that the site remains safe and secure during any subsequent action.”
The Unite union, which represents a similar proportion of the workforce to the GMB, is also due to ballot its members at Sellafield.
