Veolia has revealed it is meeting trade union officials today (September 17), amid concerns that it plans to made redundancies, dismissals or reduce pay and working conditions for its workers employed on council contracts including waste and recycling services.
The company said it was holding the first of three pre-agreed meetings after the GMB trade union yesterday claimed Veolia had written to employees on at least 196 of its council service contracts threatening to change the terms and conditions of their employment.
And, it said that, if any cuts in jobs or pay were made, it would look to ballot Veolia staff who are members of the GMB for strike action.
Rehena Azam, GMB national officer, said: “What Veolia is doing is completely unacceptable and will not be accepted by the many GMB members working on these contracts. Veolia management's decision to make their employees bear the brunt of the squeeze on Government funding is just not on.
“GMB members are concerned about the company's unilateral announcement of redundancies and changes in terms of conditions and employment. The threat is that Veolia employees will be dismissed and re-engaged on worse terms and conditions.”
The list of 196 contracts where GMB claims the threat has been made includes waste and recycling operations such as: the Marchwood EfW incinerator in Hampshire; its materials recycling facility in Alton, Hampshire; and, the Pitsea landfill site in Essex.
Veolia
However, in response, Veolia said that the HR1 form had been sent to some of its employees in regional PFI contracts in relation to bringing all the contracts under one operating company name, Veolia ES (UK) Limited, and the action did not mean it had plans to make any cuts to staff or pay.
“As required by law we have issued an HR1 form to some municipal employees in our regional PFI contracts as we would like to consolidate our workforce under one company name. As such they would be employed by Veolia ES (UK) Limited – the main operating company for the Group in the UK – and not the regional contracts, which we already wholly own,” a spokeswoman for the company said.
“This is a statutory requirement for a change of employer name. We have no intention of making municipal employees redundant, dismiss them or re-engage them on lesser terms and conditions.”
The company would not make any further comment about whether it planned to make redundancies.
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