UK: Workers at Diageo’s Leven plant to launch series of strikes

Workers at Diageo’s Leven plant in Scotland will launch a series of strikes over a dispute about pay starting Saturday, January 14, Bloomberg reported.

The dispute has rumbled on for years but the strike comes as workers across different industries in Britain and Europe are demanding higher pay, amid a cost-of-living squeeze that has pushed inflation to 40-year highs.

The strike will begin Saturday for 48 hours with a series of strike days scheduled up to April 3, trade union Unite said.

The union said Johnnie Walker maker Diageo introduced a lower rate of pay for new starters without consultation with the unions. Grievance over the issue was first raised in 2019.

The trade union estimates some of its engineering members are set to lose around 6% of their pay when moved to the lower rate of pay. The strike will reduce the engineering support for the bottling plant and Unite said it would not be safe to run the plant without the support its members provide.

Diageo denied that it was introducing a lower rate of pay for new joiners and said the dispute is with ten weekend shift engineers in relation to the number of night shifts required and associated shift premiums.

“We have well developed contingency plans in place to ensure the site can continue to operate safely and as planned,” the company said in a statement.

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