Dudley Council maintenance workers to be balloted over strike action after turning down 3.2 per cent pay offer

Maintenance workers employed by Dudley Council are to vote on whether to go out on strike.

About 150 members of the Unite union at Dudley Council will vote on whether to go on strike after refusing a 3.2 per cent pay rise put forward by the Local Government Association (LGA).

The workers are primarily involved in housing maintenance work, such as plumbing and heating engineering.

The union is initially balloting seven local authorities where membership is strongest, but added that votes in other areas could follow.

Unite says the LGA also removed apprentices from the national agreement and put a new entrant on the same pay scale as a craft operative, which is a qualified position.

The ballots will open on Friday (February 20), and close on March 26.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said: "The way the LGA has conducted pay negotiations has been nothing short of a disgrace.

"Craft workers who do difficult and highly skilled jobs deserve better than the LGA playing politics with their livelihoods and imposing a poor pay offer without negotiations. They will have Unite's full backing throughout this dispute which is of the LGA's own making."

She said Unite had made several attempts to negotiate with the LGA, which was refusing to honour the disputes process by constantly rejecting offers to come to the table including the union's suggestion that Unite sits on a number of competency groups for craft workers; and would bring this knowledge and support to these discussions.

Nationally, about 1,000 workers are involved in the dispute, with initial ballots taking place in Durham, Leeds, Stoke, Dudley, Southwark, Newham and Bristol.