GMB announces three days of strikes at AstraZeneca

THE GMB Union has announced that staff at AstraZeneca’s site in Macclesfield are to strike on three separate days in September as a result of an ongoing dispute over planned cuts to pension benefits.

Staff are to strike for two-hour blocks on September 8th, four-hour blocks on September 15th and for 24 hours on September 22nd/23rd.

The union said that if no resolution was reached with the company then further industrial action would be announced “in due course”.

It said that it had received backing for the strike from 70 per cent of its members at the site, which has 2,500 employees, when the results of the ballot were announced last week.

AstraZeneca is looking to end a defined benefit scheme enjoyed by workers at the site, which is its second-largest in the group. The company held three months of talks with the union earlier this year to no avail.

Allan Black, GMB national officer responsible for  AstraZeneca said:  “The strike action follows a GMB ballot of its members in the company in the light of this highly-profitable pharmaceutical company’s decision to make savage cuts in its employees’ defined benefit pension scheme.

“GMB is enormously proud of the overwhelming vote by members on this pension issue.  We are also buoyed up by the messages of support from our sister unions across Europe and across the world. The last thing our members want to do is to take strike action but the attack by the company on the pension entitlement of our members leaves them with no choice.”