Officers at the UK’s Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), represented by trade union Nautilus International, have voted overwhelmingly to continue both strike action and action short of a strike.
More members voted in favour of industrial action than in the first ballot in early 2024, strengthening the union’s mandate in the fight for fair pay at a service where wages have shrunk by 30% in real terms since 2010, indicated Nautilus.
On a turnout of 63%, 97% of members voted for action short of strike and 90% voted for strike action. In the previous ballot, the turnout was 60% with 79% voting yes to strike action and 85% voting yes to action short of strike.
Nautilus director of organising Martyn Gray thanked its RFA members for participating in the ballot and “standing strong”, adding: “With this vote, our members have sent the strongest possible message to the government — that they will no longer be ignored, and their hard work and dedication can no longer be taken for granted.
“This issue will not go away, and the only way for the government to settle it is to present our hardworking members — who play an essential and increasing role in national defence — with a serious pay offer that RFA officers feel able to accept.”
The union was required, by law, to reballot members in order to continue industrial action, which began with action short of strike on 1 June and has since escalated to include five days of full strike action, the first strikes in the history of the organisation.
Though the RFA has yet to set a date for further industrial action, Nautilus told TradeWinds: “You can tell from the strong mandate that they are committed to seeing this through until a decent pay offer (for the contested 2023/2024 pay round) and a pathway to reparations is received from MoD [the Ministry of Defence].”
Negotiations with the department are still ongoing, Nautilus told TradeWinds: “We’ve been continuing to engage with the MoD on this dispute and will continue to do so.
“We believe there is a simple resolution to this, but the MoD are not yet able to provide an offer that falls within the expectations of those we represent.
“We have had one offer to date which fell well short of members’ expectations — so much so that both ourselves and the RMT union did not put the offer to our members.”
Nautilus said it is seeing the results of years of underinvestment in the RFA crew.
“If the MoD truly wants to get RFA vessels back to sea to support our naval capabilities, then it must come back to the table with a firm pay offer and a plan to support and grow its RFA workforce over the long term,” it concluded.
