Waste, recycling and street-cleansing workers in Barnet have rejected the council’s second offer to settle a long-running holiday-pay dispute, prompting their union to set a deadline for a better proposal before it moves towards a formal industrial-action ballot.
The offer covered 18 months of backdated holiday pay. It was rejected in a week-long consultative ballot which closed in September and recorded turnout of more than 90 per cent in both services, Barnet UNISON reported. The result is not itself a strike vote: the consultation tested members’ views on the settlement offer, rather than authorising industrial action.
UNISON says the workers would accept six years of backpay as a compromise against a period of underpayment it says stretches back 12 years. Members have also suggested that any settlement could be paid in instalments. The union’s position is that the offer falls far short of the period for which regular overtime was not included in holiday-pay calculations.
Deadline set for 9 October
The union has given Barnet Council until Friday 9 October to make an improved offer. If there is no acceptable proposal, UNISON says it will formally declare a trade dispute. A formal ballot on industrial action could then follow in November, with possible action in December.
No strike has been called and no dates for disruption have been announced. Any industrial action would depend on negotiations and the outcome of a later formal ballot. If depot staff did walk out, household waste and recycling collections and street-cleansing work could be affected, but the scale, duration and locations of any disruption are not yet known.
The council’s latest proposal followed an earlier offer of six months’ backpay, described by the authority as a goodwill payment. Depot workers rejected that offer in a consultative process in August. The second proposal lengthened the period to 18 months, but workers have again voted it down.
How the dispute developed
The disagreement concerns holiday pay linked to regular overtime. Workers raised questions after an overtime-related holiday-pay element appeared on payslips following a change in the council’s payroll arrangements in 2025. UNISON says the new arrangements exposed a failure to include the element over a period of 12 years. The council has previously said it was discussing with former payroll provider Capita how the situation arose.
The workers’ claim is not a request for a new pay rise. It concerns how holiday pay was calculated on overtime already worked. The union says a six-year settlement would be a midway position between its members’ demand for redress across the full period and the council’s 18-month offer. The value of individual claims would vary with each worker’s overtime record; no single payout figure has been announced for this latest proposal.
Barnet Council’s earlier position was that there was no legal basis for a retrospective claim, while it offered a goodwill payment and said it was willing to review why the payments had not been introduced sooner. That difference in how the matter is characterised remains central: workers are seeking compensation for pay they believe should have been included, while the council has treated its earlier proposal as a settlement payment.
Negotiations remain the next step
The immediate decision is whether the council will improve its offer before the 9 October deadline. UNISON has called for senior council involvement to find a settlement before the dispute advances. The union’s reported timetable leaves a short period for further talks before a possible formal ballot in November.
For residents, the issue is not yet a change to collection schedules or a confirmed service interruption. The public-facing risk arises only if talks fail, a formal ballot supports action and workers subsequently take industrial action. Until then, the council and union have an opportunity to resolve the dispute through negotiation.
The coming days will therefore determine whether the rejected offer leads to a formal dispute or whether a revised settlement can be reached. The 9 October date is a union deadline, not a strike date; any later action remains possible rather than decided.
