Striking staff at Sheffields household waste recycling centres have rejected proposals that would have seen opening hours reduced by two hours less than originally planned, opting instead to stay on strike.
The strikes, at five sites across the city, have been ongoing throughout May, June and early September after it was announced that changes to operating hours intended to save the council up to 487,000 per year would result in redundancies for seven workers (see letsrecycle.com story).
A meeting involving Sheffield city council, its waste contractor Veolia ES (UK), HWRC operator SOVA Recycling and the GMB Union, representing staff at the five sites, took place earlier this month (September 7), with the council offering to reduce operating hours by 9% instead of 13% as it had originally planned to do.
Strikes
However the offer was rejected by GMB members at a meeting on Thursday (September 13) who still felt that the deal was inadequate. The strikes are now set to continue indefinitely.
Peter Davies, GMB regional officer, admitted that he thought that the offer made by the council may be the best that they could hope for, but said that his members were fighting for their lives to keep the sites open longer.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, he said: For the first time we were able to get all of the key decision makers together at one time. We had four hours to negotiate with them and in the end an improved proposal to keep the sites open an extra two hours a week was offered.
That looked like the best offer we could get but when put to the members it was rejected, and we will now see if we can get back to the drawing board.
MHH Contracting was hired to open its site at Attercliffe in the north of the city to the public last weekend (September 8-9) in order to reduce the inconvenience to residents while the strikes are ongoing. However, the company was not asked to open its site last weekend, after complaints from the GMB.
Council
The council has now said that it is working with Veolia to find an alternative arrangement to reduce the inconvenience to residents.
Councillor Jack Scott, the city councils cabinet member for the environment, recycling and streetscene, said: It is regrettable that this action is still going ahead given that we have negotiated with the workforce over recent months to produce an offer which I believe is the best we can put on the table given the massive cuts the Government have made to our budget.
This offer has been rejected which means we will be facing strike action over the weekend. If we had another option to stop this action we would take it, but given the financial position the council is in, this is just not possible. I apologise to Sheffield people for any inconvenience that this strike may cause them.
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