Councillor Brett Decides To Stay Away From Leeds City Council On Holiday During Strike

28 Sep 2009

However Cllr Bretts claim is in line with that of Andrew Mason, Chief Environmental Officer for Leeds City Council, who told the media yesterday that the Lib Dem/ Tory Administration plan to outsource the City cleaning services to the private sector in 2011. That is when the pay protection for their workers in the cleaning department runs out. 600 workers are on strike in Leeds since the 7th September because Leeds City Council is going ahead with plans to cut the wages of refuse workers by one third, on average from £18,000 to just £13,000 a year. A mass meeting last week voted to continue the indefinite strike action.

GMB Central Executive Council (CEC) earlier this week announced that it will provide an initial £10,000 to the hardship fund for GMB members on strike in Leeds since the 7th September .GMB’s CEC also announced that it was launching an appeal to all 3,000 GMB Branches across the UK for financial and other support.

The GMB CEC have today made arrangements for a major benefit gig /rally to be organised in Leeds to raise funds to support the strikers and to highlight the scandal of mismanagement of Leeds City Council by the Lib Dem Tory coalition. The gig organisers will be approaching bands from West Yorkshire to play at this event. A date and venue will be announced shortly.

GMB Organiser Desiree Risebury said, “The householders of Leeds will rightly ask why is Councillor Brett not back in Leeds trying to get the dispute resolved and the bins collected. The City is in a desperate state with rubbish. The workforce have long known that they have a two faced management. But we now have three people saying different things about the privatisation of this service. Which of them is lying? Councillor Brett should get back to Leeds and start talking as the dispute enters it‘s fourth week. Taking holidays in these circumstances is pure rubbish”.