The charity chief addressing homelessness frequently criticise private property owners for prioritising profit over tenant welfare. Yet, a recent conflict within one such charity seems to have unveiled its chief’s significant remuneration. Unite the Union alleges that the head of St Mungo’s homelessness charity takes home around £189,000 annually.
Presently, there’s a pay-related contention involving the charity’s staff; Unite asserts that the management is using agency staff as a tactic to resolve the disagreement. A “unity gathering”, as termed by the union, is set to occur in London today.
In a forthright declaration, Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, remarks: “Businesses and entities have begun resorting to agency staff to counteract lawful strikes, trying to set colleague against colleague with the intention of thwarting union actions. From 10 August onward, this will cease to be a tactic available to antagonistic employers.
“St Mungo’s should now direct their attention towards resolving this prolonged contention. They ought to cease their efforts to disrupt the strike and instead strive for its resolution.
“It appears that St Mungo’s is willing to elevate rents and service charges beyond the rate of inflation and also augment their CEO’s £189,000 remuneration by five per cent. However, they fall short in providing just treatment to their staff. It’s high time they acted appropriately.”
St Mungo’s, when approached by Landlord Today, responded: “Given that we are currently engaged in discussions with Unite the Union, we cannot presently reveal the earnings of our senior executive team members.”
“We’ve presented a fresh proposal aimed at settling the wage disagreement and plan to discuss its specifics with Unite delegates in the upcoming days.
“We’re fully committed to collaborating with Unite in hopes of concluding this disagreement, especially at a juncture when the call for our aid is on the rise. Our primary objective is to ensure the organisation’s longevity, enabling us to persistently assist some of the most disadvantaged individuals in our society.”
Recently, Unite has labelled the charity’s wage increase offer of 2.25 per cent for its employees as “meagre”. St Mungo’s has stated that acceding to Unite’s requests would threaten their “financial stability as an entity”. The contention revolves around the remuneration for the financial year 2021/22.
The organisation highlights that it implemented a 1.75 per cent increment in wages for that period. However, Unite is pushing for a retrospective and integrated hike of 10 per cent. The charity further suggests that accommodating this demand for both the previous and ongoing financial years would amount to nearly £9.7m. Furthermore, it mentions that their financial buffer has notably diminished over the past year, partly due to extra compensations previously granted to employees.
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