Last updated 16:17, Wednesday, 21 May 2008

REFUSE collectors in Copeland will go on strike next Tuesday in a dispute over working hours.

The walk out is planned to hit Copeland Council hard, coming the day after the bank holiday, when most households will be expecting their fortnightly rubbish collection.
However, the council has insisted it will put contingency plans in place to avoid people having to put up with overflowing bins for a month, while they wait for their next scheduled collection.
The action was announced after talks broke down over arrangements for working a 37-hour week.
Unite, the union representing the refuse collectors, said a national agreement for local government workers reached in 1997 ensured that all workers would have a 37-hour working week.
The union said that Copeland Council had offered to reduce the collectors’ standard week to an average of 37 hours from their present 40 to 45, but demanded that workers would not have a proper finish time and they could be scheduled for up to nine hours or more a day.
Workers voted overwhelmingly to reject the plan take all out strike action from 7am on Tuesday, May 27.
Alan McGuckin, Unite regional industrial organiser, said: “This agreement was supposed to decrease the amount of time these hard-working employees spent at work, but the council is proposing to increase the working day.
“There would be no guaranteed finishing time and it would be impossible to make any arrangements outside of work for either family responsibilities or social events. This is not about money, it is about quality of life for the workers.”
The council said it was “dismayed” at the proposed strike but pledged to keep household waste, trade waste and clinical collections running during the threatened industrial action and hoped a deal could still be reached.
It said it had been working with its employees and unions to try to come to a satisfactory outcome.
The proposed deal would see waste employees’ working hours reduced, with hourly rates of pay and overtime rates increased.
Head of Leisure and Environmental Services, Keith Parker said: “We are particularly disappointed that the union has chosen to take this route.
“We have been working hard to come up with a new package of pay and conditions for our waste staff, and we believe that this was an excellent package that would see waste staff both better off and with improved working conditions.
“We firmly believe that this package is in the best interests of both our employees and our community.
“I would like to make it absolutely clear that we cannot accept proposals that would allow staff to leave before the job is done.
“We could not provide a service to the public by operating in a way that allows our waste staff to go home whether the job is finished or not, nor could any authority – which is precisely the reason that no other authority or waste contractor operates in such a way.”
However, the council and the unions have not been able to agree a deal over the length of the working day. The employer offered a flexible scheme similar to most other council employees, calculated over a four week period, but the Trades Union has demanded a fixed hour working day.
The indefinite walk out will mean that the council will not be collecting garden waste for the duration of the industrial action. Kerbside recycling and bulky waste collections are likely to be affected, but recycling sites will be emptied as normal.
Further disruption could take place to other services such as street cleansing collections.
The council has pledged to keep these disruptions to a minimum. In order to keep rubbish under control in town centres arrangements have been put in place to ensure trade waste is collected as normal.
Mr Parker added: “We are sorry to all of our customers for any inconvenience caused by the strike. I would like to assure everyone that we will be working hard to try and avoid strike action, but should it take place, we will put in place contingency measures which ensure that household waste is collected as soon as possible.
“Our message to anyone who is expecting a household waste collection from Tuesday, May 27 would be to put out your waste as normal and it will be collected as soon as possible.”
The council will be updating its website (www.copeland.gov.uk) and phone messages to keep customers up to date with news on the industrial action.