Environment Agency UNISON members set to take industrial action

UNISON Industrial Action at the Environment Agency Pay 2018
Following a ballot of members at the Environment Agency there was an overwhelming rejection of the derisory 1.3% pay increase that was imposed be the Agency. UNISON members will now be taking general action short of a strike involving
  • “working to rule” and not showing normal flexibility; and
  • to take part in selective withdrawal from incident response rosters on particular dates.
General action short of a strike
The action has two forms and has been approved by the ballot. working strictly to contract in the following ways:
  • Not doing any unpaid extra work on any day.
  • Not travelling before or after normal working hours, in those hours for which staff are presently unable to claim flexihours or payment for travel time.
  • Don’t take part in out-of-hours events such as stakeholder meetings.
  • Decline requests to take part in mutual aid, or in incident response where not rostered.
Working your own job, and refuse to take on duties that properly fall to others. This includes:
  • Refusing to do work that others are not doing because they are taking part in incident response or Brexit preparation or deployment to other roles outside the Agency.
  • Do not take on incident response work for colleagues who has withdrawing as part of the action.
  • Refusing any assignment to any other organisation or to do work on behalf of any organisation, including Defra.
Incident response
UNISON are calling for withdrawal from being on the out-of-hours incident response rota following each of the days listed: Friday 17 May, Friday 24 May, Friday 31 May and Friday 7 June. This means ending work at the end of the normal day on those days, and not taking part in the Friday night/Saturday morning shift on incident response rosters, then resuming your participation on the Saturday morning at the start of the Saturday/Sunday shift.

Notes to editors:
– UNISON is the UK’s largest union, with more than 1.3 million members providing public services – in education, local government, the NHS, police service and energy. They are employed in both the public and private sectors.

Media contacts:
Caroline Fife T: 012 735 44037 M: 07939 143281 E: c.fife@unison.co.uk