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A four-day walk-out by Environment Agency staff has been called off following an 11th hour U-turn from ministers to give the regulator permission to negotiate a new pay offer for its employees.
The strike, planned from Friday to Monday involving hundreds of staff including frontline workers, was suspended to allow for negotiations to begin again over wages and recruitment.
A budgetary staffing underspend will be used to boost wages, which Unison’s Donna Rowe-Merriman, said managers had wanted to do for months, but government had not allowed it. “Ministers could have intervened ages ago and helped end the dispute. But they chose not to.”
Unison, which represents workers at the public body, said employees want to see a “long overdue” rise in wages along with support to recruit new people to roles as well as retain current workers.
“Persistent low pay at the Environment Agency has resulted in chronic staffing shortages. Many employees have left for better-paid jobs and haven’t been replaced,” Rowe-Merriman, head of environment, said.
“That’s put the staff that remain in post under incredible pressure, never more so than in the last two weeks. Climate change is threatening ever more extreme weather, like the terrible storm much of the country is currently experiencing. But the agency simply doesn’t have enough staff to go around.”
She added that agency employees had been reluctant about taking industrial action especially after storms Babet and Ciaran.
“Staff have been working round the clock to keep communities safe the best they can, but there’s only so much they can do when there are so few of them. Poverty wages have caused the staffing crisis at the agency and the government has sat by and let this happen.”
Talks will take place in the coming days to decide the next steps for workers.
Environment Agency staff voted to take industrial action on four occasions during this year due to dissatisfaction over pay and working conditions. Employees were offered a 2% rise and a one-off payment of £345 last autumn, which was rejected.
Budgetary cuts have seen the Agency’s spending allowance repeatedly slashed for several years, leading to staffing problems.
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