GMB call on Medway Council to pay staff Living Wage
GMB, the union for staff at Medway Council, have called on the council to end the Victorian workhouse mentality and start paying their staff a salary that allows them to have a decent standard of living and lift them out of a lifestyle that has seen hardworking local authority employee’s using food banks and relying on pay day loans to get them through the month.
Medway Council has consistently frozen the pay of its staff or begrudgingly given its staff pay increases of less than 1%, when most employers are paying an average of 2%, with staff at the bottom of the pay scales being given higher than 2% to redress the imbalance of 8 years of austerity.
Frank Macklin, GMB Regional Organiser said: “For years now the Trade Unions as well as Labour and Conservative councillors in Medway Council meet to discuss and negotiate the pay of staff employed in Medway Council.
“At these meetings we have been continuously met with a wall of silence from the Conservative councillors who simply sit in the meetings playing with their phones or iPads.
“GMB trade union and the Labour group of councillors are refusing to take part in what has become a sham process where the staff representatives and opposition councillors are constantly ignored by Conservative councillors. They have become nodding dogs who simply act on the orders of the leader of the Conservative-controlled Medway Council, Alan Jarrett.
“Meanwhile, Mr Jarrett prefers to spend taxpayers’ money on ridiculous vanity projects such as celebrating a naval battle that we did not even win, instead of using much needed funds to lift his hard working and loyal staff out of using food banks and pay day loans.
“The GMB Trade Union is calling on any Conservative councillor with a heart to lobby their colleagues with a view to ending what has become a perverse policy of Medway Council that has led some of their lowest paid members of staff directly in to the path of poverty that may take years to rectify.”
Contact: Frank Macklin 07983 326 743 or Charles Harrity 0797 751 804 or GMB Press Office 07970 114 762
