Cadent engineers began taking part in a ban on overtime on Tuesday (10 May) as part of a dispute over pay, the GMB Union has confirmed.
Last month field-force workers voted to walk out in a strike ballot after rejecting a 2% pay increase for 2021 and 4% from July this year.
“With inflation running at 9 per cent, the deal amounts to a massive real terms pay cut,” the union said.
GMB claimed “thousands” of workers were participating in the ban. Out of more than 1,900 eligible voters, nearly 1,300 GMB members took part in the union’s ballot on industrial action last month. Of those, almost 87% voted in favour of strike action and nearly 91% voted in favour of action short of a strike. Cadent has a field workforce of more than 2,500 in total.
However, in a statement on Monday, GMB said it was only calling on its members to take part in an overtime ban as a “gesture of goodwill”. This includes withdrawing from pre-planned overtime to cover gaps in rosters and sick leave.
Gary Carter, GMB national officer, said: “Despite members voting overwhelmingly for strike action, as a gesture of goodwill members will begin with a short term overtime ban.
“But workers will not hesitate to escalate to strike action if the company doesn’t come back to the table with an improved pay offer.
“It shows how out of step senior management are; they’re just not listening to their employees and the problems facing working people across the country.”
Although the union claimed the overtime ban could potentially cause outages across Cadent’s large network, the gas distributor said it wanted to assure customers it will continue to provide a “safe and reliable gas network throughout any action”.
Martin Rimmer, Cadent’s chief of people, said: “Whilst the GMB has concentrated on asking for a higher pay increase – more than the 6.08% pay increase over two years that we have offered – they have not taken into consideration the whole pay package.
“Especially the pay increase to our lowest paid colleagues to a minimum of £10 per hour, ensuring that they are paid above the real living wage. We also gave £750 lump sum payment to our field force and have made significant changes to the terms and conditions of some contracts based on colleagues’ feedback.
“The pay review and negotiations had been productive over the past 18 months, with the majority (c. two thirds) of our workforce agreeing the pay increase, and this has been paid to them.”
Rimmer explained that while all staff will receive a more than 6% pay increase, the £10 per hour minimum wage means more than 37% of staff on its new contract will receive an almost 14% pay increase over two years from June 2021 if the pay deal is accepted, in addition to the £750 lump sum.
“It is disappointing that an agreement could not be reached on the fair pay deal and the broader package offered to colleagues,” he added.