Balfour Beatty’s engineering workers to stage strikes in March

(Reuters) – More than 100 engineering workers at Balfour Beatty will stage three 48-hour strikes in March over pay disputes, British trade union RMT said on Saturday.

The decision comes after the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport workers (RMT) rejected the company’s offer to increase pay by 5.5% from April 2022.

“Balfour Beatty is a highly profitable company and they need to use some of their excess wealth to reward their workers properly,” RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said.

The strikes will start at 2200 GMT on Fridays to 0959 GMT on Sundays from March 3 to March 5, March 10 to March 12, and March 17 to March 19.

Hundreds of thousands of workers, many from the public sector, have been going on strike across Britain over the past year as they demand pay rises from employers that take into account the worst inflation in four decades.

(Reporting by Jose Joseph in Bengaluru, Editing by Angus MacSwan)