Cumberland council is made up of the former Cumbria county, Allerdale borough, Carlisle city and Copeland borough councils.
Refuse crews working in the Allerdale area are employed by the in-house Allerdale Waste Services company.
Around 60 loaders and drivers represented by Unite in the area began strike action today over what the union described as “poverty pay”. This is scheduled to last for two weeks.
Unite said loaders are paid £10.90 an hour while drivers are paid £11.89 an hour. It added that these pay rates “are among the lowest paid to refuse workers throughout the UK”.
The council however has argued that it gave staff a 10% pay rise in April and the Union’s demands for a 30% pay rise are “unaffordable”.
Initial strike action is ending this Sunday (23 April), but after talks to avert the strike collapsed this week the Union said industrial action will begin again the following Tuesday-Sunday, before further action again takes place on Tuesday 9 May to Thursday 11 May.
‘Poverty’
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Allerdale Waste Services can’t continue paying poverty pay to our members who are undertaking essential frontline roles.
“There is absolutely no justification at all to be paying rates far below what workers undertaking the same roles in neighbouring areas are paying their workers.”
The strikes are in the context of the workforce having been awarded a 10.1% pay rise
- Charles Holmes, Allerdale Waste Services
‘Unaffordable’
Charles Holmes, managing director of Allerdale Waste Services said: “The strikes are in the context of the workforce having been awarded a 10.1% pay rise on 1 April this year. This equates to drivers being paid an annual salary of £27,508 and the loaders £22,165. The Union’s request of a 32.6% (inclusive of the 10.1%) increase for drivers and 19.2% for loaders is completely unaffordable and is not able to be supported by the company.
“We have been in dialogue with Union representatives last week and this week. We have requested more time to be able to resolve the matter and a request for the strikes to be called off, which they have not accepted. We therefore have no option but to put forward contingency plans to try and minimise the impact on residents and businesses in the area as best as we can, however, we ask that people are patient with us at this difficult time.”
Day 1 of allerdale wast services strike action @GMB_union_NWI @deniseNWI @neilsmithgmb pic.twitter.com/Z2TnJOSHVb
— Oli slack (@OliOlislack3) April 27, 2023
Plan
Cumberland council has asked businesses and residents to present their residual waste as normal and teams from other councils “will aim to collect as much waste as they are able to”. If this is not collected, residents have been advised to bring waste back in and present it the following week.
The council also reminded residents that HWRCs remain open for residual waste, but residents should not bring their wheelie bins on site.
Residents have been told that recycling collections will not take place in this period as this service is being used to collect domestic waste. Bring sites in the area will be collected more frequently.
Allerdale Waste Services is a wholly owned trading company of Cumberland Council (formerly Allerdale Borough Council) and provide waste collection services for the authority. Their workforce is therefore directly employed by Allerdale Waste Services. The industrial action does not affect waste services in the Carlisle and Copeland areas.
There are around 97,000 residents in Allerdale who will be impacted.
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