Pay deal agreed for Yorkshire workers at Rolls-Royce blade factory

Rolls Royce has agreed a pay deal with around 120 workers at its Rotherham advanced blade casting facility.

The pay deal guarantees 17% over a three year period. Union Unite said it was “one of the largest deals that Rolls Royce has agreed in recent years.”

The union said that pay rates were among the lowest across the Rolls Royce group and this had resulted in workers at the south Yorkshire site, which makes single crystal turbine blades, leaving the business for better paid jobs.

Unite regional officer Doug Patterson said: “While small in number in terms of the workforce, it is one of the largest deals RR has agreed in recent years.

“It has come about because the company finally accepted what Unite had been saying for some time that paying the lowest rates in the group was contributing significantly to the high rate of attrition.

“We regard this pay deal, following tough negotiations, as a success in these challenging economic times and it demonstrates the strong value of union membership.

“What individuals will receive depends on whether they are ‘shop floor’ or ‘professional’, but we estimate that for most employees that it will be a minimum of 17% over three years.”

Rolls-Royce opened the £110m Advanced Blade Casting Facility (ABCF) at Rotherham in 2015.

The company’s underlying revenue was £13.8bn in 2016, and it invested heavily in R&D during the year.

However it has not all been plain sailing for the group, which settled with the Serious Fraud Office in January to the tune of £671m over corruption and bribery offences, and whose auditors KPMG now face an investigation by the Financial Reporting Council.