Thousands of public sector workers in Brighton and Hove to strike

Thousands of public sector workers are set to go on strike as part of national action on July 10.

The two main trade unions for Brighton and Hove City Council workers – Unison and GMB – balloted their members for possible strike action following a 1% pay offer from the local government employers.

Workers claim after three years of a pay freeze they deserve more to ensure they can cover the cost of rising household bills.

Unison, which has 600,000 members nationally, announced yesterday it would support the action after 58% of the 84,000 members who responded said they supported the action.

The GMB expects to declare the results of their ballot on Friday (June 27) but those locally said it was confident its members would follow Unison’s lead.

Both Unite and the National Union of Teachers has also announced that its members will be joining the strike, which will lead to dozens of the city’s schools closing.

Alex Knutsen, of Brighton and Hove Unison, said: “People feel very strongly about this. They live in a very expensive part of the country and 1% is not enough to cover their spiralling living costs.”

Mark Turner, of GMB in Brighton and Hove, said: “The difference between us and Unison and Unite is that before we went to ballot to went to a vote with all our members on if they accepted the offer and it not, if they supported action. 87% said they supported action.

“They are offering 1% to the lowest of the lowest paid in the public sector when the average increase in the private sector is 2.5%.

“Those complaining about a low turnout should remember that there is not a single politician in the land who has received more than 30% of the total number of voters. So perhaps those in glass stones should not really throw stones.”

The action means that the local authority’s policy and resources committee meeting planned for July 10 is set to be moved to the following day.

Conservative group leader Geoffrey Theobald called for the action to be suspended.

He said: “This is hardly a resounding mandate for the Union bosses to cause further disruption and inconvenience to the city’s residents.

“People that I speak to are thoroughly fed up with this sort of thing following last summer’s long-running bin strike and the widespread school closures earlier in the year.

“I have the utmost admiration for those care workers, school support staff and others who do incredibly demanding jobs but the harsh reality is that the public purse simply cannot afford larger pay rises.

“And if we did bow to the union bosses demands, the Council would have to cut more jobs in order to pay for this.”