GSK avoids strike as UK workers accept pay negotiation - Endpoints News

suitersa.blogspot.com

GSK CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley can breathe a lit­tle eas­i­er now that hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees in the UK have called off a po­ten­tial strike.

Last month, more than 1,000 en­gi­neers, tech­ni­cians, lab­o­ra­to­ry an­a­lysts, ware­house em­ploy­ees and oth­er work­ers vot­ed in fa­vor of strik­ing against GSK over what they called “a de­riso­ry” pay raise. On Mon­day, the em­ploy­ees ac­cept­ed a 10.5% pay raise — a “sub­stan­tial im­prove­ment” on the 2.75% they said they were ini­tial­ly of­fered.

“We are pleased to have reached an agree­ment with our em­ploy­ees cov­ered by col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments at UK man­u­fac­tur­ing sites. We are com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships with our skilled man­u­fac­tur­ing work­force and the unions that rep­re­sent them,” a GSK spokesper­son said in an email to End­points News. 

The dis­pute in­volved work­ers at sev­er­al GSK sites, in­clud­ing: Mon­trose and Irvine in Scot­land; Ware in Hert­ford­shire; Wor­thing in West Sus­sex; Barnard Cas­tle in Durham; and Ul­ver­ston in Cum­bria.

“This was an un­prece­dent­ed dis­pute at GSK and it would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of our reps,” said Tony De­vlin, na­tion­al of­fi­cer of a UK union rep­re­sent­ing the work­ers called Unite.

“Unite will be us­ing this set­tle­ment as a step­ping stone to en­sure that in all fu­ture pay set­tle­ments GSK prop­er­ly re­wards its work­force,” De­vlin said.

GSK said in a state­ment to End­points last month that it was com­mit­ted to work­ing to­ward a so­lu­tion with the Unite em­ploy­ees. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny dis­put­ed some of the union’s claims, in­clud­ing the 2.75% fig­ure. The ac­tu­al in­crease would have been 4% of base salary, a spokesper­son said, plus an an­nu­al bonus and a one-off award of around 2% of base salary.

“We recog­nise the im­pact in­fla­tion rates are hav­ing on peo­ple around the coun­try and are strong­ly com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the skilled peo­ple who work in GSK man­u­fac­tur­ing,” a spokesper­son said at the time.

The union al­so took is­sue last month with Walm­s­ley’s 17% pay raise, bring­ing her to­tal pack­age last year to near­ly $11 mil­lion. How­ev­er, Walm­s­ley’s pay pack­age still falls short of oth­er Eu­ro­pean bio­phar­ma CEOs, in­clud­ing Roche CEO Sev­erin Schwan, who took home $12.4 mil­lion (11.5 mil­lion CHF) last year, and No­var­tis’ Vas Narasimhan, who made $12 mil­lion (11.2 mil­lion CHF).

The news comes as Walm­s­ley faces pres­sure from ac­tivist in­vestor El­liot, which launched an at­tack on the phar­ma last year, claim­ing it had “lost its way” and that bet­ter lead­er­ship was nec­es­sary.

Mean­while, Walm­s­ley promised that 2022 would mark the be­gin­ning of a new era of growth for GSK, even as R&D chief Hal Bar­ron pre­pares to make his ex­it this Au­gust.

Adblock test (Why?)

"accept" - Google News
May 25, 2022 at 12:22AM
https://ift.tt/Uit7zXC

GSK avoids strike as UK workers accept pay negotiation - Endpoints News
"accept" - Google News
https://ift.tt/qZohlvX
https://ift.tt/UB7vLzj

Bagikan Berita Ini