Sellafield strike will cost ’£1m a day’

By Matthew Legg Business editor

Last updated 12:28, Wednesday, 10 September 2008

STRIKE action at Sellafield could end up costing the British taxpayer more than £1m a day.

The last time workers walked out at the plant, in November 2003, that was the estimated financial damage.

But with an historic privatisation of the site on the horizon in November, reputations as well as cash are on the line.

Nuclear Management Partners, an American-Anglo-French consortium, is due to take over the running of the complex in November, subject to finalisation.

NMP has already denied that strike action would threaten its takeover.

The GMB and Unite unions have voted “overwhelmingly” for industrial action.

Their 4,000 members represent almost half the entire Sellafield workforce.

The dispute is over the 2008 pay offer which was overwhelmingly rejected by more than 95 per cent of GMB members.

The offer was for a two per cent increase in pay and a possible 2.5 per cent on an efficiency bonus.

Speaking to Sellafield’s in-house newspaper Energize in July, current managing director Barry Snelson explained why the company was taking such a hard line just months before it was due to hand over to a new Parent Body Organisation (PBO).

He said: “The pay settlement for 2008/09 falls on our watch, and we will do what is required of us, painful or not, until the last moment.

“It is not right to stall difficult decisions just so they land in the next executive’s period of responsibility.

“The opening offer was actually five per cent, but all funded by productivity improvements.

“We embarked on a genuine debate on consolidation of some of this amount as it could be consolidated at the start, progressively or at the end of the financial year in question.”

Asked why Sellafield Ltd had moved from the traditional way of settling pay offers using the rate of inflation, Mr Snelson said: “The previous settlements show that when we have been in a position to give a higher settlement we have been more than willing to do so.

“But the years of being the nation’s biggest yen earner are behind us.

“We do not make a profit and we are now wholly funded by the Government through taxation.

“We are thus being exhorted to be bound by the public sector pay guidelines.

“We have striven, through all our efficiency programmes, to redeploy, retrain and reassign to minimise the risk of redundancies,” added Mr Snelson.

“We have continued to pay bonuses and have asked for no changes to terms and conditions throughout this debate other than to ask for a move to greater productivity and efficiency.”

The GMB meets tomorrow where it is expected to name a date for strike action.

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