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Islington Tribune - by JAMIE WELHAM
Published: 28 September 2007

Last-minute deal averts refuse workers’ strike

A threatened weekend strike was averted this week following a last-minute agreement with the Islington’s new refuse organisation Enterprise.
Enterprise based in High Holborn merged with the borough’s established waste organisation ICSL Accord last Thursday.
The dispute involving the GMB had originally been with Accord and would have brought bin bag chaos to the streets.
Gary Carter, London representative of the GMB said: “We met the new company on Wednesday morning, gave them our proposals and hammered out an agreement. The dispute has been suspended and we are very happy with the outcome. We just wish Accord could have done this from day one and we could have avoided the strike altogether.”
If the strike had gone ahead, rubbish would not have been collected from properties in 432 streets either today (Friday) or on Monday.
Union members went on strike last week over changes to their collection roster and crewing system – which they claimed reduced the quality of service and unfairly increased their workload. They also started a work-to-rule action which has also been called off since Wednesday’s meeting.
Councillor Lucy Watt, executive member for environment said, “I’m glad that our residents aren’t going to experience any more disruption. I want to apologise to anyone who experienced disruption as a result of GMB’s action last week.”

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