Wage cuts spark row
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• A bitter row over proposed wage cuts for HGV drivers has broken out between the National Union of Public Employees and Sutton Council workers who won a local refuse collection and street cleaning contract in September.
Plans for 45 redundancies and wage cuts of up to 240 a week were put forward by the council's in-house team when bidding for the £1.8 million contract. Although this was provisionally accepted by the council NUPE has attacked the deal, claiming that such wage cuts are unfair.
Under the proposed changes, drivers of road sweeping and refuse collection trucks would suffer minimum wage cuts of Ell: the average weekly pay for a domestic refuse driver would fall from E260 a week to 2220. Street cleaners would receive a pay rise of around E2 a week. Some workers could also lose five days holiday a year, and supervisors would be forced to work an extra 14 hours a week.
Meetings are now taking place between the council's inhouse team, Sutton Direct Services, and NUPE, which has asked SDS to make the cuts less severe. Despite the cutbacks and the likely loss of workers, Sutton's in-house team is confident of maintaining services.
It says: "The Borough Engineer comments he has at least 12 HGV drivers who have confirmed their intention to take up employment under the new contract. This would be sufficient to run the service on a day-to-day basis, although holiday cover would have to rely on agencies until recruitment fills long-term gaps.
"The driver situation is the critical one, and it is the Borough Engineer's belief that other drivers will come forward to take up work when the final offer is made."