Unite members to vote on industrial action at Guardian Print Centre

Unite members to vote on industrial action over Guardian Print Centre redundancies


Unite members at the Guardian Print Centre in London are to vote on industrial action against proposed redundancies.

Publisher Guardian News and Media (GNM) announced last week that it would planned to cut a quarter of the jobs at the east London facility.

However, Unite national officer Steve Sibbald said that a decision has been made to ballot on industrial action against any compulsory redundancies.

Unite has to give GNM seven days notice ahead of any ballot, but Sibbald said that it could be turned around quickly, so a strike could be voted on within the next fortnight.

Sibbald said: "The problem we have at GNM is that the site has not been around very long, so the guys there only have four or five years' service. It is quite a young plant too; often if redundancies are offered in our older sites it is almost seen as an early retirement present, but to these guys the job is of far more value than the payment so they are very keen to protect the jobs."