Southwark Council’s housing workers will strike next week in a row over annual leave.
Nearly 160 housing and estate workers, responsible for electrics, plumbing, pest control and more, will walk out from Tuesday, January 28 to Thursday, January 30.
The Unite the Union members claim they receive less annual leave than colleagues on higher salaries.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “It is a disgrace that a chief executive of a council, on hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to sit behind a desk, gets more annual leave than our hard-working members on the frontline of council services.”
According to the union, management grades in administrative positions get twelve more days of annual leave than repair workers.
A Unite statement said: “Workers in the housing and estates team start on 27 days annual leave per year. Those in senior, executive roles at the council head office get an additional nine days (36) but this can rise to an additional 12 (39) days with long service.”
It added: “During the strike, maintenance and repair work across Southwark’s estate will not take place or it will be severely delayed.”
Unite claimed the 160 striking members formed the majority of the overall department workforce.
A strike by many of the same members was narrowly avoided in October 2023 after Southwark Council agreed to a pay deal.
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The Labour-run council initially offered the workers a £1,925 pay increase, which Unite claimed did not account for the additional London weighting.
Members eventually accepted an increased offer of £400 extra, with backdated pay increases putting another £700 in their pockets.
Annual leave was not raised as an issue by the union during that phase of negotiations.
The threat of industrial action will come as a blow to Southwark, which has long struggled to stay on top of the demand for repairs on it properties.
In November, the council leader apologised after the Regulator for Social Housing found ‘serious failings’ in the service offered to residents.
The damning verdict came despite Southwark Council devising a plan to improve the service a year earlier in September 2023.
The strategy included pledges to answer calls within five minutes, give vulnerable residents priority support and recruit dedicated neighbourhood repair managers.
On Tuesday (January 21), it was revealed that the council had dipped into its reserves to spend £420,000 on ten call centre staff members for eighteen months.
Cllr Stephanie Cryan, cabinet member for finance, defended the hires at an overview and scrutiny committee meeting on Tuesday, January 21.
She said: “The idea being that as the repairs improvement plan embeds more and more, the ‘right first time’ increases and the productivity increases in terms of jobs, that actually that resource is no longer needed. And that’s why it’s done on temporary staff rather than permanent staff.”
Southwark Council was approached for comment.
