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Kirklees Council staff in ballot for strike over pay
Thousands of council workers in Kirklees are to vote on a possible five-day strike next month over a pay and redundancies row.
The Kirklees branch of the Unison trade union is balloting its 8,500 members on industrial action in a dispute about redundancies and sick days.
The current row is about he council's plan to reduce its non-teaching workforce from 11,200 to 9,700 as part of the widespread public spending cuts. Workers across the spectrum – from dinner ladies to binmen and carers to teaching assistants – could stage a walkout for five days in October if the vote comes out in favour of industrial action.
Kirklees Unison's members will be balloted between September 9 and September 29.
Branch secretary Paul Holmes said workers were "being asked to pay for someone else's crisis", but said he believed the public was "totally supportive".
The last Kirklees Council workers' strike was just over two years ago in July 2008, when 80 schools across the district closed and no bins were emptied during a two-day walkout.
Around 400 staff are thought to have taken voluntary redundancy or early retirement at Kirklees Council recently, but the authority is now considering compulsory redundancies.
Unison also objects to the possible use of a mathematical formula – based on number and length of sickness absences – to decide which workers are laid off.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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