St Mungo's: workers at homeless charity to launch month-long strike over 'pitiful' pay offer

Staff at homeless charity St Mungo’s will launch a month-long strike today, over a "pitiful" pay offer made to staff.

Unite the Union members will walk off the job and mount picket lines outside offices in London, Brighton, Bristol and Oxford on Tuesday (30 May), after staff received a proposed pay increase of 2.25%.

“Charity workers who should be on the streets helping the homeless have reached breaking point," Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said. “The workers are now taking a stand."

“Instead of seizing the initiative to end the dispute, management’s decision to offer a pitiful 2.25% has spectacularly backfired.

“Now St Mungo’s faces a month-long strike and the workers have Unite’s total support.

“The pitiful pay offer has just made everyone in the union angrier.

“St Mungo’s have the answer in their own hands.

“Make Unite members a decent pay offer.

“Their indifference to the financial pressures facing their own staff is quite frankly astonishing.”

Emma Haddad, chief executive of St Mungo’s, said: “Our latest offer, combined with the annual pay rise proposed by the National Joint Council, would have meant a pay rise of at least 10% for those colleagues on the lowest salaries.

“This is what Unite has been asking for but voted against it.

“After all our efforts to find a solution to this dispute, a four-week strike is unprecedented and disproportionate.

“It will impact vulnerable people at risk of or recovering from homelessness.

“My door remains open to Unite, every day during the strike.”