Kier presented a revised pay offer to union members on Tuesday (19 January), which was accepted.
The agreement brings an end to industrial action which had lasted over two weeks, and has involved an overtime ban by workers and 48-hour strikes on Thursdays and Fridays.
The dispute had been over salaries with collection crews having called for an increase on their £7.81-per-hour basic rate of pay. Kier offered a salary increase in September 2015, which Unite described as “too low”.
However, Kier and Unite resumed talks this week in order to explore a restructured deal, which phases in pay increases over a three year period.
In a bid to counter the industrial action, last week Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) council had called in temporary and casual-contract waste collection staff to clear a backlog of uncollected recycling and food waste (see letsrecycle.com story).
Resumed service
Following the successful talks on Tuesday the council said Kier crews are back to making their normal scheduled collections from households. It added: “The council’s crews are continuing to clear any backlog and anticipate completing this by the weekend so that all recycling and food waste collections will be back to normal by the beginning of next week.
“Residents should put out their recycling and food waste on their normal collection days. We’re also grateful to members of the public who have offered their services to assist with the recycling effort.”
The council currently has seven extra crews out on the road as well as an additional truck to help with the outstanding food waste collections. It has said it will be reclaiming additional costs it has incurred directly from Kier.
Settlement
Julian Tranter, managing director of Kier Environmental explained: “We appreciate how much disruption the strike, overtime refusal and work to rule has caused for residents, and understand their frustration that so little could be done to off-set the impact when strike laws prevent the use of additional agency workers to cover those undertaking industrial action.
“With the council’s support on our approach, we have worked very hard through ACAS to try to prevent any strike taking place, and during the strike to try to re-engineer an offer that could be used to encourage union members to re-enter talks. We are naturally very pleased that the union (Unite) chose to re-enter talks, and equally that the revised more front loaded offer was accepted by members yesterday.”
“Once again we apologise for the disruption caused to residents and thank them for their support in continuing to recycle during the dispute.”
Council
In a statement on its website, BANES asked for residents to keep putting their recycling out on the scheduled collection day and not to remove it if it is not picked up. It said: “If you do not want to leave it out overnight, please take it back in after 4.30pm and put it out before 7am the following morning. We will collect your recycling and food waste as soon as we can.”
The council reassured residents that the recycling could either be picked up by a waste or recycling collection vehicle, as its additional crews are momentarily working alongside Kier employees to pick up the backlog of recycling that has built up as a result of the industrial action. Residual waste and garden waste/Christmas tree collections have been unaffected by the action.
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