Environment Agency (UNISON) Strike Calendar

• Thousands of Environment Agency (EA) workers in England will stop out-of-hours attendance at incidents such as floods, water pollution, spills, waste fires and fly-tipping this weekend, in their ongoing pay dispute.
• The industrial action, which starts at 9am tomorrow (Saturday), is set to continue for a month, with workers refusing to volunteer for on-call cover outside of contracted hours until 19 September.
• Officers will step in where there is a threat to life, from incidents such as a major flood, as emergency life and limb cover has been agreed by the union.
• This new wave of industrial action follows months of industrial action seeking an improved pay offer from the agency.
• The 2% plus £345 pay award for 2022/23 was so low that some colleagues saw their pay dip below the national living wage in April and had to receive a salary ‘top-up’ to comply with minimum wage legislation.
• Staff are due to receive an unconsolidated cost of living payment of £1,500 this month, but this does not address the gulf between the 2022/23 pay award and the rising living costs members have experienced.

Thousands of Environment Agency workers in England are to strike for four days over pay later this month, blaming government inaction for putting communities, waters and wildlife at risk, says UNISON today (Wednesday).

Despite months of strikes and other action where workers have taken themselves off ‘on call’ incident response rotas, ministers have made no attempt to invite unions in for pay talks, says UNISON.

The union’s latest action means staff working on coastal sea defenses, protecting communities from floods, tackling water pollution, waste fires and fly-tipping will strike from 7pm next Friday (14 April). They will be out all that weekend until 7am on the Monday morning (17 April).

This growing staffing emergency means the Agency’s incident response and enforcement teams are already too thinly stretched to keep England’s waterways sewage-free and communities safe from harm, warns UNISON.

Thousands of Environment Agency workers in England will go on strike for the first time later this month over pay disputes, according to UNISON. The workers, who maintain safety structures such as the Thames Barrier and coastal sea defenses, will strike on January 18 from 8am to 5pm. This is the first time that agency workers have gone on strike in the organization's history over pay. Last November, workers were given a pay rise of just 2% plus a £345 payment, which UNISON says is less than a fifth of the lowest current measure of inflation. UNISON is urging the agency and ministers to negotiate and give workers an improved pay offer.