Great Yarmouth Services (UNITE) Strike Calendar

Great Yarmouth bin and street cleaning workers have voted overwhelmingly for strike action over poverty pay, Unite, the UK’s leading union, said today. Around 100 workers, will strike over a 3.3 per cent pay offer from council-owned Great Yarmouth Services. For the majority of workers this would not even take them to the minimum wage, which increased by 4.1 per cent in April, meaning they have been given a pay rise of nothing at all.

Before the strike vote, council officials told the workers that they should think themselves lucky with the legal minimum wage as the town is a ‘low wage, poverty area’ and that if they were unhappy they ‘should work for Sainsbury or Tesco’. During the vote, workers were falsely told they could lose their jobs if they take industrial action and that strikes would not have any impact because agency staff would be brought in – which would be unlawful. In addition, the room allocated for union business was locked with the keys reported missing when a number of meetings were scheduled. The keys were found shortly after the meetings were supposed to finish. Strike action severely impacting household waste collections, street cleaning, landscaping and grave digging services during the height of the summer season will be announced in the coming days.