Six days of strikes threatened

UNITE, the largest union in the UK, has served notice of six strike days on IT services company Fujitsu – which has an important site at Warrington.
The strikes will take place on Friday, December 18 and on January 7, 8, 11, 14 and 15.
About 350 work at the Warrington base at Birchwood where, it is expected, pickets will be on duty.
The action follows a vote of Unite members in the company by a majority of 75 per cent voting for industrial action and 92 per cent voting for action short of a strike. According to the union, this would be the first ever national strike in the IT sector in the UK.
The strike is over proposals for 1,000 redundancies in the UK, a pay freeze imposed earlier this year, and plans by the company to close the main final salary pension scheme to future accrual, reducing the total pay package of each affected employee by typically around 20 per cent.
The union intends to stage a “Scrooge” protest outside the company’s London headquarters on December 18, contrasting the company’s treatment of staff with last year’s £200 million profit and the £1.6 million paid out to two directors as “compensation for loss of office”.
Unite had originally called action in November, but this was withdrawn when the company agreed to talks and to relax deadlines on jobs and pensions. The talks resulted in an offer from Fujitsu which was rejected by 83 per cent of members.
Fujitsu employs around 11,500 people in the UK.