St Mungo’s workers on the picket line as a pay row with the charity goes on

HOMELESSNESS case workers entering their ninth week on strike say they will stand firm in the pay dispute for as long as it takes.

Unite member Zak Cochrane – a St Mungo’s case worker – was joined by dozens of other members who the union has called out on Westminster picket lines “indefinitely”.

Two are facing homelessness themselves after being served notices to quit in the cost of living crisis.

Mr Cochrane said: “I started working for St Mungo’s on the first day of the pandemic. We were recruited as outreach workers to help get homeless into emergency hotels. It was incredibly scary if you remember, the first lockdown.

“You saw on the news people are dying and you didn’t know what to think. It was very difficult to social-distance. We didn’t really have adequate PPE. But we worked all the way through, 12-hour shifts, providing clients’ meals three times a day.

“In Westminster, more broadly, the cost of living crisis has caused numbers to go up. There is a high turnover of outreach workers, people get burned out. When I started there were four patches in Westminster. Just before we came out on strike there was just one co-ordinator and one worker.

“It is a completely unsustainable situation.

“Pay is a big factor but so is the cost of living crisis that is making London unaffordable. Two colleagues have got NQTs and are being made homeless.

“They are trying to find homes from the picket lines.

“We have record-high numbers of rough sleepers. We are quite flabbergasted that Mungo’s are dragging this out like this. We want to be back at work but we know this is unsustainable.”

In both the parking wardens – who are also on strike – and homelessness case worker fightbacks, the workers do not feel valued by their employers, despite having provided an important public service throughout the pandemic.

Mr Cochrane spoke about how his colleagues were holding strong but there were no signs management are about to budge, suggesting the board of trustees may be taking cues from the government’s head-in-the-sand playbook for responding to union demands.

He said: “They are clearly trying to use the strategy that they are seeing on a national level with the government being intransigent with national disputes, like we are seeing with the NHS.

“They are saying, ‘We will dig our heels in and maybe it will go away.’ So we have been clear to them that it is not going to happen.

“We have huge concerns over the direction St Mungo’s is taking. We are fighting for the future of homelessness sector. We are absolutely committed to the strike.”

The St Mungo’s strikers believe the management of the charity do not have workers’ rights at heart.

The charity’s CEO is Emma Haddad, a former director general at the Department for Work and Pensions during the “hostile environment” years, who earns £189,000 a year at the charity.

Mr Cochrane said there were picket lines in Harrow Road, near Royal Oak, five days a week and nights as well.

The group had also met this week with Camden traffic wardens, who have also launched an indefinite strike against contractors NSL over pay.

St Mungo’s said it has already applied a rise of 1.75 per cent to salaries, but that Unite has asked for a backdated and consolidated rise of 10 per cent.

It said meeting the request for the last and current financial year would cost a total of £9.7million and that its cash reserves have already been depleted over the last 12 months, in part by additional payments already made to staff.

In a statement Ms Haddad said: “It was unexpected to hear that Unite has extended its period of strike action indefinitely. We are in the middle of discussions aimed at finding a solution and had a constructive meeting with Unite representatives on 12 June.

“Bringing an end to this unprecedented period of industrial action remains our key priority, so we can all focus on working together to support people at risk of, or recovering from, homelessness.”

The St Mungo’s workers have survived with strike pay and also £40,000 donations have been made to a strike fund since the dispute began.