In response to the company's offer to reopen negotiations, today's General Meeting agreed a proposal from the reps committee to call off industrial action. This will allow formal negotiations to restart on Monday.
Reps will be contacting Amicus officials to withdraw the action - this includes both the strikes planned for Monday and Tuesday, and the ongoing action short of strike.
The meeting agreed:
Motion 1 - Issues in dispute
Providing the offers on the other issues were positive, and the company agreed a distribution of the April 2004 pay review which addresses the Fair Pay issues, we would agree to take no further action in pursuit of the 2003 Fair Pay claim.
Motion 2 - Plans for action
The aim of our campaign has always been to secure a sensible negotiated settlement to the dispute.
Given that the company is now prepared to negotiate again, we resolve to call off our industrial action to allow intensive formal negotiations to take place for a period of one week, which should be sufficient to know whether the company is serious about an agreement.
To prepare for the possibility that the negotiations are unsuccessful, we authorise the reps committee to call action short of strike and up to four days further strike action during the remainder of the eight weeks from 15th September. An EGM must be held before the first of these days, to give the members the opportunity to assess the outcome of the week of formal negotiations, and call off this action if appropriate.
Motion 1 prevents the company claiming that the dispute is about affordability, focuses us on defending the rights and benefits we already have, while still ensuring that the "Fair Pay" issues are not ignored.
Motion 2 means we have a short period to find out whether the company is serious about negotiations and assess progress before further action is taken.
The meeting was clear that the campaign goes on until the ink is drying on a new set of agreements - we need to keep explaining the issues to our colleagues and building up support for the campaign.
Posted by IA at October 9, 2003 05:20 PM