News from Unite the Union - workers striking at St Mungo’s homelessness charity in Brighton and elsewhere……..
Workers will embark on a month long strike between Tuesday 30 May and Monday 26 June.
Workers at the homeless charity St Mungo’s will embark on a month long strike beginning on Tuesday 30 May. The dedicated charity workers are fed up with greed at the top of their homeless charity while they struggle to make ends meet.
There will be pickets in London, Brighton, Bristol and Oxford
The charity’s latest pay offer of a pitiful 2.25% spectacularly backfired resulting in the announcement of a month long strike. Fury amongst the workforce is growing and now new members are joining Unite in droves.
Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham said: “Charity workers who should be on the streets helping the homeless have reached breaking point. The workers are now taking a stand.
“Instead of seizing the initiative to end the dispute, management’s decision to offer a pitiful 2.25% has spectacularly backfired. Now St Mungo’s faces a month long strike and the workers have Unite’s total support. The pitiful pay offer has just made everyone in the union angrier.
“St Mungo’s have the answer in their own hands. Make Unite members a decent pay offer. Their indifference to the financial pressures facing their own staff is quite frankly astonishing.”
The homeless charity still hasn’t resolved a pay dispute going back to 2021 in the midst of falling pay and a cost of living crisis.
Unite regional officer Steve O’Donnell said: “The workers at St Mungo’s are ready for this strike. Although they recognise taking action has an impact on their clients the fault of the strike lies firmly with the management.
“Our members will not accept the crumbs from the table. Especially while the number of senior managers increases and the CEO earns a huge salary.
“All their divisive and spiteful tricks of changing payroll deadlines to impoverish strikers and cancelling shifts before the strike will backfire because our members are ready to take action for improved pay.”
Since 2013, St Mungo’s chief executives have seen their average pay at the charity spiral by 77 per cent – up from £107,000 to more than £189,000 (according to the latest published accounts). St Mungo’s won’t reveal the salary of the newly appointed CEO, Emma Haddad.
In the last ten years, the pay of senior management at St Mungo’s has increased by 350 per cent. In stark contrast, over a similar time frame, the real value of the wages of St Mungo’s workers, many of whom work on the streets helping the homeless, has plummeted by 25 per cent. A frontline worker earns around £26,000.
