Staff at the south west region’s headquarters of the Environment Agency walked away from their desks in the centre of Bristol this morning in protest at receiving a real-terms pay cut this year. The 12-hour strike by thousands of EA employees involved staff working in river inspection, flood forecasting, coastal risk management and pollution control saw members of the two unions - Unison and Prospect - walk out.
As well as the 12-hour strike, for another 12 hours either side of the walkout, EA employees withdrew from incident response rotas, which cut the ability of the agency to respond to new pollution incidents.
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