Capita workers set to walk out over ‘poverty pay’
BLUE chip finance companies serviced by Capita will be hit when nearly 1,000 life and pension workers – 175 of them based in Manchester – stage a 24-hour strike in a dispute over “poverty pay”.
More than 920 life and pensions workers at Capita across the UK will strike for 24-hours from 12.01am on Thursday June 16.
Unite, the country’s largest union, said that the strike would inevitably lead to a disruption of service to Capita’s blue chip clients, including Abbey Life, Aviva, Guardian, Met Life, Prudential and Royal London.
Unite national officer for finance Dominic Hook said: “Our members are fed up to the back teeth by enduring poverty pay, while Capita accrues large profits on the back of their hard work.
“The strike will hit the services to a number of blue chip companies which may wish to put pressure on Capita bosses to come to a fair settlement.
“If Capita does not enter into constructive talks, more strikes are definitely on the cards, given the depth of anger of our members.”
The strike comes on top of an overtime ban since 3 June and the on-call ban and standby ban, which started on May 27.
As well as Mancheser, the Capita workers are based in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Reading and Stirling.
The dispute follows a “derisory” pay offer which would have resulted in a real terms pay cut for 75% of staff. Capita had proposed a 1.5% ‘pay pot’ which would have been distributed to staff through a flawed and opaque performance-related grading system, which only serves to divorce pay increases from the cost of living.
Dominic Hook added: “Profit-hungry Capita bosses are ducking-and-diving to squeeze our members so the pips squeak with the flawed ‘pay pot’ proposal – and now the staff have said that ‘enough is enough’.”
A Capita spokesperson said: “There has been no impact to clients to-date and plans will be in place to ensure that we minimise any potential disruption to clients.
“We are disappointed that the pay proposal, which we believe is a fair and equitable one, has been rejected by around half of the Unite member employees of Capita’s life and pensions business.
“Less than a third of the total workforce in our life and pensions business are Unite members.”
