Social workers in Southampton have voted to continue to strike over pay cuts after staging a second stoppage today.
Social workers first joined social care workers, rubbish collectors, street cleaners and traffic wardens on the picket line on 3 August.
Employees are angry that the council is cutting pay by up to 5.5% for anyone earning more than £17,500. The council introduced the cuts by dismissing all staff and offering to re-employ them on new contracts from 11 July.
Today, in an attempt to placate the unions, the council proposed to raise the threshold for those subject to pay cuts from £17,500 to £21,500 and decrease the size of the proposed salary cuts for the rest of the workforce by 0.5 percentage points.
Social workers’ salaries would also rise collectively by £500,000.
But Mike Tucker, secretary of the Southampton branch of Unison, said the union’s members had rejected the offer. “Even under the new proposals council workers will suffer a substantial drop in pay,” he said.
“This dispute is nowhere near a settlement.”
Royston Smith, leader of the council said he was disappointed the revised offer was rejected. ““This latest proposal is as far as we’re able to go – the unions have raised the expectations of their members over and above the financial reality,” he said. “We simply cannot afford to meet those expectations.”
He added: “Our residents have to come first and we will not continue to allow people to be disrupted by this strike action. We will look to get services back to normal by any means we can and are not ruling out any options.”
Unions in Southampton are set to meet tomorrow to decide when to strike.
What do you think?Join the debate on CareSpace
Keep up to date with the latest developments in social care. Sign up to our daily and weekly emails
Related articles
Social workers ‘being paid to strike’ over cuts, says council
Social workers to sue pay-cut council for unfair dismissal
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 
Hampshire County Council 
Lincolnshire County Council 
Norfolk County Council 
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust 
South Gloucestershire Council 
Wiltshire Council 
Wokingham Borough Council 
Children and young people with SEND are ‘valued and prioritised’ in Wiltshire, find inspectors 
How specialist refugee teams benefit young people and social workers 
Podcast: returning to social work after becoming a first-time parent 
Podcast: would you work for an inadequate-rated service? 
Family help: one local authority’s experience of the model 
‘We are all one big family’: how one council has built a culture of support 
Workforce Insights – showcasing a selection of the sector’s top recruiters 
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Instagram
Comments are closed.