MORE than 200 Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) workers rallied outside South Kensington Tube station yesterday.
Unite members across scientific research, laboratory support and site management are striking over the ICR’s refusal to restore incremental pay progression.
Unite says the institute holds hundreds of millions of pounds in cash reserves and pays its chief executive, Kristian Helin, over £400,000 a year, while full 16 per cent pay restoration would cost £9 million.
Rob Williams, national chair of the National Shop Stewards Network told the rally: ‘All these people walking past the picket would be absolutely horrified if they realised that you are going on strike not to be rewarded, but to keep your heads above the parapet of the cost-of-living squeeze.
‘They would be absolutely horrified when they think of the roles that you play, the jobs that you do. You do not get a fortune for the work you do, but you are doing research to fight cancer.’
Lucy Cox, of the National Education Union (NEU), said: ‘What you are experiencing is what we as educators are experiencing. We are essential workers, just like you. We are doing one of the most important jobs ever.
‘What you are facing is the erosion of wages, the cuts from the top, the bosses trying to make you pay while they build up their reserves.
‘They have got millions in the bank, but they are making the lowest-paid people pay for them, the people on the frontline who actually do the most important work.
‘We are experiencing, as you are, the long-term erosion of pay, where you know that your pay does not keep up with the cost of living, where you feel like you are constantly slipping away.
‘That is why we have got to go for a national ballot.’
Teige Matthews-Palmer, an electron microscopist at the ICR and a Unite representative, said: ‘We are moving into eight weeks. Then we have had more than eight months, then we have had over a year, where there was no movement.
‘When the demands are for you to restore our increment scales, then you do something about it, the pay erosion that has been imposed on us. The offers were not relevant. They were nothing.’
He said health workers elsewhere in London faced the same squeeze: ‘They are balloting to stop £150 million of unnecessary cuts, just like St Thomas’ Hospital, to balance their books in an environment where they are not getting funded.’
