Edinburgh staff at outsourced services company Diligenta go on strike over pay
Edinburgh staff working for finance sector company Diligenta were striking today in dispute over pay.
Diligenta provides admin services to a wide range of companies in the financial sector.
And the Unite union said the strike - which also saw walk-outs at sites in Liverpool, Glasgow, Reading and Stirling - would cause considerable disruption to Dilgenta’s many clients.
But the union claimed the company, a subsidiary of India's Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), only had itself to blame. Unite said Diligenta management had been for months that the strike action could be avoided if the workforce had been offered an acceptable pay rise this year.
The union said the company had refused to even take part in negotiations.
Around 1,000 Unite members working at the five Diligenta sites were staging what Unite described as an initial 24-hour strike.
The workers are involved in outsourced work, undertaking call centre, back office and complaints roles for several clients including Lloyds, M&G, Aviva and Phoenix.
And the union warned the dispute was set to escalate, with further strikes scheduled for Friday November 28, Monday December 1, and Monday and Tuesday December 8 and 9.
Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham said: “Diligenta needs to wake up. Imposing a real terms pay cut on its workers, while making millions of pounds of profits and whilst continuing to reward shareholders is completely unacceptable.
“Today across picket lines Unite members will be making their anger clear in their fight for the fair pay deal they deserve. This is only the beginning of the industrial action.”
Unite said Diligenta made an average of £82,000 per staff member in 2023; its pre-tax profit the same year was £27.1 million, increasing to £28.9 million in 2024 whilst revenue rose to its highest ever at £606 million.
The union also said 2024 saw a shareholder dividend payment to the parent company TCS of £14 million, which could have funded a 5 per cent pay increase for all staff.
Unite regional officer Helen Camp, said: “Diligenta’s workforce have spent months trying to reach a fair agreement through negotiations. Unite members have now had enough.
“Unite members have had years of below inflation pay rises while workloads and stress have both multiplied. Diligenta must now wake up and make a decent offer to its workers or face ever growing levels of disruption to the contracts it operates.”