Institute of Cancer Research, London. Photo Magnus Manske via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Hundreds of Unite members at a number of biomedical establishments have been on strike after derisory pay offers. The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) is one such body. It has refused to negotiate a pay rise reflecting the cost of living after making a succession of below-inflation pay offers over recent years.
Those working for the ICR across scientific research, laboratory support, and site management have had a 3.75 per cent offer imposed on them, along with a refusal to implement an increment-based pay policy. Unite points out that the ICR has a “development fund” of over £100 million and has costed a 16 per cent restoration pay rise for all staff at just £9 million. So there should be enough in the kitty, including the CEO’s £400,000 a year.
Unite says that anger among the staff has been mounting since the ICR brought in illegal, untrained agency staff to break the strike. Regional officer Will Searby warned that the ICR was “potentially putting people and equipment at risk through unsafe handling”. The strike is set to be “continuous and indefinite” until management are prepared to talk.
Meanwhile at two teaching hospitals in Lancashire – Blackburn and Burnley – bio-medicine staff who were on strike during June and July have escalated their strikes over the refusal by Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to pay the holiday pay to which they are entitled.
The trust lost at tribunal in a case concerning one employee several years ago, but it has refused to settle for the rest of the staff, who are now owed thousands of pounds.
The union says that the trust has given conflicting reasons why it cannot resolve the dispute. First it falsely claimed that the findings of the tribunal did not apply to other workers. Then it blamed the Department of Health and Social Care for the delay before switching to blaming NHS Employers, and now to blaming NHS England.
Anger has been further exacerbated by the trust’s failure to honour derogations agreed with the strikers to provide life and limb cover during the strikes. Instead of providing critical cover, the trust drafted in unqualified staff. Fresh action is taking place every Monday to Friday in August through September or until the dispute is resolved.