Ritzy workers to vote on deal

Submitted by cathy n on 13 August, 2014 - 2:03 Author: Jonny West

Workers at The Ritzy cinema in Brixton, south London, will vote on a new pay offer from their employer, Picturehouse Cinemas.

The deal was reached after exhaustive late-night talks at conciliation service ACAS between Picturehouse management and reps from the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union (BECTU), including workplace reps from The Ritzy itself. Workers have struck repeatedly in a dispute aimed at wining the London Living Wage.

The negotiating team is recommending acceptance of the deal, which provides what a BECTU statement calls a “voyage to higher pay.” The deal offers an immediate pay increase to £8 per hour, backdated to October 2013, with further increases to £8.20 on 5 September, £8.40 on 2 January 2015, and a final increase to the (current) London Living Wage rate of £8.80 on 4 September 2015.

Because the London Living Wage would not be secured for over a year, many workers see the deal as falling short of the central demand of their long-running dispute — an immediate implementation of the London Living Wage. In early July, workers voted by a 97% majority to continue the Living Wage dispute.

Workers were also frustrated by BECTU’s initial press releases publicising the deal, which implied it had already been accepted. A statement from the strikers said: “It should be made clear that this does not mean that a deal has been ‘agreed’ as some media outlets have reported. As at every stage of this process, the BECTU members at The Ritzy themselves are the only ones empowered to make that decision and they will do so in the coming weeks through a secret ballot.”

The ballot runs until 26 August.

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