Eurostar
employees have voted for strike action in a dispute over pay and grading.
Members
of the RMT union at Eurostar’s Waterloo and Ashford terminals have voted by
more than two to one for the action.
RMT
general secretary Bob Crow said: "This vote signals that our members in
the customer and terminal-services teams are no longer prepared to accept low
pay and indefensible pay differentials between people doing identical work in
different locations."
Crow
said the starting salary of £13,000 has stood still for 10 years.
"The
company needs to come up with proposals that end low pay and do away with a pay
system that allows staff at Ashford doing identical work to be paid £4,000 less
than colleagues at Waterloo," he said.
"We
will now be consulting our reps on the next steps in the campaign, and the RMT
executive will meet to set strike dates later this week, but this could lead to
disruption over the August bank holiday weekend," Crow said.
GMB
staff at British Airways have also provisionally said they will strike over the
bank holiday.
