Big ‘yes’ vote for hard-negotiated ISS pay rise

Telecoms & Financial Services August 5 2021

Thursday 5th August 2021

ISS members working on the BT contract have voted by more than four to one to accept a CWU-brokered pay settlement for 2021 that will see nearly three quarters of employees receive a consolidated rise of 2.15%.

Crucially, ISS’s final offer – which emerged at the culmination of protracted talks – maintains the Real Living Wage as the absolute minimum hourly pay rate for housekeeping and security members who were outsourced by BT in April 2019.

As such, the deal, which was placed before members in a consultative postal ballot that commenced last month, involves a baseline 20p per hour rise from £9.30 to £9.50.

The 2.15% pay increase also extends to a small number of employees whose hourly rate currently sits just above £9.50. Higher paid staff, meanwhile, will receive 1.75% – with the fully consolidated increases all flowing through to overtime and other pay-related elements.

Now the deal has been ratified by members – with 86% of those casting their vote supporting it in a consultative ballot that closed on Tuesday – the rises are expected to have been paid by the end of the month, backdated to June 1.

Commending the company’s final offer to members just prior to the ballot opening, the union’s ISS National Team chair Dave Tee had pointed out that, in an area where the lower National Living Wage pay rate of £8.72 an hour is commonplace, the importance of the union’s success in ensuring Real Living Wage pay rates were carried over in the BTFS outsourcing agreement had once again been underlined.

Thanking members for demonstrating their unequivocal support of the deal, newly elected CWU national officer for ISS, Tracey Fussey, concludes: “While we accept that the Covid pandemic has presented many challenges to ISS – just as it has to many other companies – it was hugely important to the CWU that, as agreed in the TUPE transfer, the Real Living Wage as defined by the Living Wage Foundation remains the minimum wage rate on the BT contract.

“This deal delivers that objective, but our aspirations don’t stop there and we hope that next year we can build on that.”