Choice Support staff vote to strike over changes to salary levels

Members of the union Unison at the social care charity Choice Support have voted in favour of strike action in a dispute over changes to pay.

Sixty-eight of 80 Unison members balloted last week among the charity’s workforce in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, voted to walk out in a row over changes to salary levels.

The charity, which has 1,600 staff nationally, said it had to make changes to pay among staff that it employs through a contract with Wakefield Council in order to protect the long-term viability of the service.

Proposed changes will see the charity’s lowest-paid staff receive a pay rise, although other staff will have their pay cut. It said the changes affected 258 staff out of its total Wakefield workforce of 280 employees and 63 casual staff.

Choice Support said pay changes were “necessary so we can continue providing long-term, sustainable and high-quality care” through its contract with the council, and that the changes were in line with local market rates.

The staff who will be paid less have been offered a lump-sum payment equivalent to nine months of the salary reduction.

Gary Cleaver, a regional organiser at Unison, said that Choice Support’s financial statement for 2013 showed that nine of its directors earned “astronomical salaries” of between £60,000 and £120,000, and that these had “increased significantly over the past year”.

“The chief executive’s salary has risen by at least £10,000 in the past year,” said Cleaver. “It is outrageous that they are paying themselves these huge sums yet slashing the pay of the front-line staff who care for these vulnerable people every working day of their lives. How can the board possibly justify forcing our members into poverty while they are paid many times more than the national wage?”