Oxford staff at homelessness charity St Mungo's begin strike

Staff organised a picket outside the charity’s centre in Floyds Row, behind St Aldates police station, on Tuesday morning with banners demanding that ‘frontline workers deserve more’.

Unite, the union that has organised the strike, said the walkout followed a ‘pitiful’ pay offer of 2.25 per cent. General secretary Sharon Graham said the offer had made ‘everyone in the union angrier’ and added that St Mungo’s workers had ‘reached breaking point’.

One of the posters on the picket line on Tuesday morning Picture: Oxford Mail (Image: Oxford Mail)

Union rep Alex Latcham-Ford told the Oxford Mail on Tuesday morning (May 30): “We don’t want to be on strike. We care; there is a reason we do this job and it’s because of our clients. We want to be working with them and supporting them.

“But to do that we need pay to keep up with inflation, and we can’t take pay cut after pay cut, year after year.”

He added: “Wages have stagnated for the vast majority of workers whilst we’ve had a rise in the cost of living; we have members who are going to food banks.

“Our mission statement [for St Mungo’s] is to end homelessness, yet pay is sending workers into desperation.”

"I think it's a really great thing workers across the organisation are taking a stand and all saying [to bosses] 'come to the table," he said. 

One staff member on the picket said she was receiving more money through statutory strike pay – roughly £70 a day – than she was from her job at the charity.

Staff spoke of difficulties filling support roles, with the positions having to be taken by agency workers.

Another employee, Robert Trivasse, who had worked for St Mungo’s in different roles for five years, said that for the money support workers received ‘we could get that doing something much less emotionally stressful. It’s relying on the fact that people care in a way that, if not intentionally, does end up feeling exploitative’, he added.

Unite claimed that, while frontline staff had experienced a 30 per cent ‘real terms’ cut to their wages since 2010, CEO pay had risen by more than three quarters in the same period.

One of the posters on the picket line outside St Mungo's centre in Oxford Picture: Oxford Mail (Image: Oxford Mail)

In a statement, chief executive of St Mungo’s Emma Haddad said: “Our latest offer, combined with the annual pay rise proposed by the National Joint Council, would have meant a pay rise of at least 10 per cent for those colleagues on the lowest salaries.

“This is what Unite has been asking for but voted against it.

“After all our efforts to find a solution to this dispute, a four-week strike is unprecedented and disproportionate.

“It will impact vulnerable people at risk of or recovering from homelessness.

“My door remains open to Unite, every day during the strike.”

The month-long strike is expected to end on June 26.