Around 100 employees of industrial services group Hargreaves are set to begin strike action at Drax power station this weekend.
Led by Unite, the materials handling workers at the North Yorkshire site are due to strike from Sunday, June 11, over a dispute concerning reported discrepancies between Drax employees' and their own pay packets. Unite says workers employed directly by Drax performing the same role are paid £16,000 a year on top of their base pay for working shifts – ten times the around £1,600 a year Hargreaves staff receive for shift work.
The union says Hargreaves has offered an 8% rise in the workers' basic rate of pay but that it does not address the gap and points to it being a real terms pay cut, as RPI inflation stands at more than 11%. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: "Hargreaves is an extremely profitable company and can afford to pay these workers properly. It is disgraceful that they are being treated as second class employees compared to their colleagues employed directly by Drax. This needs to change. Hargreaves' workers have their union’s unflinching support as they strike for a fair wage rise and proper shift pay."
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Unite says Hargreaves is to blame for any disruption caused by the 24 hour walkout but Drax has said the power station will still continue to supply the grid with electricity. Unite regional officer Christian Ratcliffe said: “The disruption that will be caused at Drax is entirely the fault of Hargreaves’ greed and its ripping off of these workers over shift pay. This is a very lucrative contract and Unite urges Drax to intervene and pressure Hargreaves into putting forward an offer our members can accept.”
Three of the plant's units are currently on "outage maintenance" which is not linked to the industrial action and was planned before the dispute. A Drax spokesperson said: "Drax Power Station will continue to generate baseload, renewable electricity as normal during the strike. This dispute is between Hargreaves and its employees, no Drax colleagues are part of this action."
Hargreaves' five year contract at Drax began in 2021 and has the potential to be extended by two years. Earlier this week the firm gave a trading update in which it hailed a strong performance - particularly across its earthmoving contracts on the HS2 project - and revealed cash reserves were £22m, up from £14m in 2022.
In half year results published earlier this year the firm said revenues had climbed 20% to £350m and underlying pre-tax profits had jumped 30% to £211.9m. Hargreaves declined to comment.
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