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."
