Eurostar
customer service teams at Waterloo and Ashford terminals will vote on whether
to strike after a new salary banding system was rejected as "utterly
inadequate and simply unacceptable" by the RMT union.
The
union claims the company operates different pay rates for people on the same
grades, which means that those at Ashford are paid £4,000 less than colleagues
at Waterloo doing identical work.
The
RMT said affected staff suffer from ‘scandalously low pay’, with employees at
Ashford International recruited on £13,000 per year – the same amount offered
in 1994.
RMT
assistant general secretary, Pat Sikorski, said: "What we need is a
straightforward ‘rate-for-the-job’ agreement for every grade that puts a proper
value on multifunctional and often multi-lingual skills, and an end to unequal
pay.
