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17 November, 2008
Months of dispute were brought to an end last week when workers at the Sellafield nuclear energy site in Cumbria, UK, voted to accept a pay offer.
Two UK ICEM affiliates, Unite the Union and GMB, voted by a three-to-one margin to accept terms similar to what a third UK union, Prospect, accepted in mid-September. Unite and GMB had been engaged in limited industrial action at the British Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s (NDA) site as it prepares to sell the last state-owned nuclear assets.
Although the union Prospect accepted a 2.5% pay increase plus a 2.5% bonus in mid-September from Sellafield Ltd., operator of the facility, members of the two ICEM affiliates, Unite and the GMB, rejected the offer as the pay increase was below inflation.
The 5,000 of 10,000 Sellafield workers who are represented by Unite and GMB received four months back pay, and two separate bonus schemes of £600 each. An added incentive in the negotiated proposal was a £1,500 “goodbye bonus” as the NDA prepares to sell its nuclear assets to Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of French, American, and British energy interests. That sale is scheduled to be finalised on November 24.
During October, Unite and GMB members had strictly performed only work in their own job classifications, refusing to attend meetings on efficiencies, and refusing cross-departmental work.
The Sellafield site, with a technical facility in Risley and a former uranium enrichment site in Capenhurst, will now undergo a massive multi-year reprocessing and clean-up project, estimated to cost £1.3 billion a year.