Top 10 Scrooge bosses of the year - Veolia

This year throughout the festive period, UniteLive will highlight our top ten worst bosses of the year – employers so miserly and mean that they’d put Scrooge himself to shame.

In the original Christmas Carol, Scrooge is described as “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous” – and that about perfectly sums up today’s Scrooge employer, Veolia.

Veolia, a French-owned firm, is incredibly wealthy. It is the largest waste management company in the UK and has recently cleared competition hurdles to purchase its rival Suez for £2bn. Veolia generates revenues of £1.8bn a year.

And yet despite this fabulous wealth, the firm cannot dig even slightly into its bottomless pockets for a decent pay rise for workers, Unite members, employed at household waste and recycling sites throughout Merseyside.

The majority of the workers are paid just £9.50 an hour, including those who have a HGV class two driving licence, with class one HGV drivers receiving just £11.87 an hour.

All the workers are asking for is a 50 pence per hour increase for the majority of workers to bring their wages up to £10 an hour. Members also want class two HGV drivers to be paid £12 an hour and class one drivers to receive £14.47 an hour.

This would be mere couch change for the likes of billionaire Scrooges Veolia, but so far the company is only willing to part with 20 pence per hour for workers. Talk about miserly!

Unite members aren’t going to hold their breath that Veolia will have a sudden Christmastime redemption, so they’ve planned strike action beginning from December 28 to 31, with more strikes planned throughout January if they refuse to come to the table with a better offer.

Commenting, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said, “The spirit of Scrooge is alive and kicking this Christmas. Veolia is an incredibly wealthy company. Its workers are already poorly paid but somehow it thinks it is acceptable to offer them just a few pence extra, during the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.

“Unite is entirely committed to defending and enhancing the jobs, pay and conditions of its members and the workers at Veolia will receive the union’s complete support.”

Stay tuned tomorrow for more Scrooge bosses.

By UniteLive team