The union says as a result its 3,000 members at the company have not had a pay rise, worth millions of pounds, since 2008.

It has now instructed its lawyers to begin action in the High Court.

via BBC News – Unite to sue BMI over failure to honour staff pay award.

The good things is Unite is a rather large union. You need massive unions if you are going to challenge multinational corporations.

In the race to the bottom….

Unite, the largest union in the UK, has today (Wednesday) accused global IT company IBM of using the cover of the recession to cut the pensions of its UK workforce. The company has announced that it is to close the final salary pension scheme for future accrual to existing members.

Unite believes that IBM can well afford to keep the existing scheme open but is seeking to cut costs in order to make more money available for dividends, to buy back IBM shares and for acquisitions.

I happened to see this come across the Indymedia wire. I have to give some accolades to the union in Aotearoa (New Zealand) who pulled this off.

Call centre workers at Synovate in South Auckland were today locked out by their employer. The workers had been negotiating for secure hours and a pay rise of a dollar when they received word by text last night that they would not be allowed to come back to work.

Upon arriving at the call center this morning union members found the front door padlocked shut by the company and a notice telling their non union workers to sneak in by the back door. In response to this attempt to use scab labour Union officials and members added their own locks to the front door and used cars and locks to block all other entrances to the building. This effectively locked the bosses inside for two hours until the union allowed one car to be moved to allow delegates to enter the building to continue the negotiations.

The union who did this is called Unite and their website is unite.org.nz. It looks like New Zealand is learning from the tactics of the French.