News

At the beginning of March, Communication Workers' Union (the UK) issued a notice of strike action. The action started last Friday, March 13. Further action is already scheduled for today, Monday (March 16).



Commending members on solid support for today's strike, CWU assistant secretary Grace Mitchell told pickets in Rugby that she hoped the clear demonstration of employee anger would concentrate minds at Airwave which is owned by private equity firm Macquarie.



"I'm sorry that we're in the position where unfortunately we've had to take strike action given that a very reasonable compromise was put on the table at ACAS from the CWU but management refused to pick it up.

"It would have been face-saving option for them, would have gone a very long way to resolving the dispute and I think we have to really question whether there was any real intent to try and avoid this dispute today."



Lead CWU rep at Airwave Chris Mason added that despite having got the number of individuals in scope for redundancy dramatically reduced during the course of negotiations, it was the company's refusal to budge from the principle of compulsory redundancy for a handful of CWU members had proved the ultimate sticking point.