1st October 2024
Valley Vets Industrial Action Update
The BVU in Unite at Valley Vets has been in trade dispute with Vet Partners for several months and the members have been on strike for many weeks. There is currently intermittent strike action occurring. Whilst Valley Vets Hospital remains open, the 4 branches remain closed. The referral services run by those that have taken industrial action ( soft tissue surgery, internal medicine and imaging, dentistry) remain closed. Those referral services ( exotics, orthopaedics) not run by those that have taken industrial action remain open. The hospital is staffed by all those who would normally work elsewhere in a very different environment: at a branch as well as those who normally work at the hospital; at least those who have not yet resigned. The hospital is overpopulated, a situation inexplicably exacerbated by the ongoing employment of locums. All staff are rotating through various job roles as dictated by hospital management. Nurses and vets who normally work at branches are overseeing intensive care wards. Referral vets who have not carried out first opinion work for years are vaccinating cats and dogs and performing neuter surgeries. Staff whose disabilities make it impossible to work in such an environment are forced to remain on sick leave, losing their livelihoods. Clients are leaving the practice in droves, in all likelihood driven by the local branch closures; their disappointment in not being able to see familiar faces and their discontent that the employer has not seen fit to properly negotiate a settlement with their employees via their union, a normal situation in work places up and down the country. Employees are unable to park at the overpopulated hospital and the effects of so many people in one site is spilling into discontent with local businesses and residents. The closure of branches and referral services is not serving the purposes of patients, clients or staff. Indeed, it is likely harmful to the welfare of all. Whose interest does it serve? The interests of an outdated, anti-union employer who intends to run Valley Vets into the ground deliberately and then point at the carnage and say, look what the union has done? The interests of an intransigent employer who wishes to punish those who took part in legal and justified industrial action? Earlier in September, the workers at Valley Vets adjusted their negotiation position, for the second consecutive time, in the hope that Vet Partners would consider engaging in negotiation. They refused once more.
What do we want?
- 10% pay rise for support staff – taking all staff to the Real Living Wage of £12ph.
- 5% pay rise for RVNs
- 2.5% pay rise for vets
- 12 weeks full pay and 12 weeks half pay contractual maternity pay, an increase from the current 8 weeks full pay and 12 weeks half pay. Vet Partners have the worst gender pay gap of the “big six” Veterinary corporations.
- 4 weeks full pay and 4 weeks half pay contractual sick pay, an increase from the current 2 weeks full pay and 4 weeks half pay.
Staff at Valley Vets have suffered real term pay cuts in recent years and these pay increases would still only go part of the way to rectifying the real terms pay cuts they’ve faced over this time.
We say to VetPartners: