Housing repair workers at a Barnet Council-owned trading company are set to go on strike over a failure to provide sick pay to an injured worker.

Trade union branch Barnet Unison has announced its members in the council housing repairs team will stage a rolling walkout beginning on 17th October in the latest phase of a four-month-long dispute with Barnet Homes.

The row centres on the case of a repair worker, Mejdi, who was injured while working for Barnet Homes – part of council-owned The Barnet Group – but was offered a loan instead of sick pay to cover his absence.

The Barnet Group says Mejdi’s employment terms and conditions, including arrangements regarding sickness absence, transferred with him when he joined from another company. But the trade union branch is calling on the council-owned company to go further and pay him for the period when he did not receive sick pay. It said Mejdi would have been able to receive sick pay if he had joined The Barnet Group directly instead of transferring in.

Branch secretary John Burgess said in a recorded video message posted to the union branch’s website that its members “demanded to be balloted” and were clear that the issue was a “matter of principle”.

John added: “Any of them could be injured at work. They understand the terror of trying to survive in the worst cost-of-living crisis in 75 years on low pay. What they don’t understand is why their employer is deliberately taking an aggressive attack on their work colleague. All of these workers worked throughout Covid and at one time were clapped as key workers.

“The other back story is that our member who was injured is a Kosovo refugee. Very few people will understand what he has endured in his journey from Kosovo to London. All we are asking is for the employer to pay his sick pay for the time period he was denied pay.”

The trade union branch said it had made “many attempts” to avoid the dispute, and its proposal for Barnet Homes to bring Mejdi’s contract forward by three weeks to cover the period when he was injured was rejected. The union branch also approached the Barnet Labour group in an attempt to resolve the dispute.

A spokesperson for Barnet Homes said: “We have fully supported our member of staff and he is now off work on sick pay. Having comprehensively investigated the incident that led to the most recent sickness, we are confident that we have acted appropriately.

“Unison continues to demand retrospective sick pay when the staff member’s contract doesn’t allow for it. We will, however, continue to talk to Unison in the hope they will take a more reasonable stance.”

A statement posted to the Barnet Labour group’s website reads: “The right to withdraw your labour following an unresolved industrial dispute is a human right, but it should always be a last resort. Barnet Labour urge all parties to try all possible avenues to resolve the dispute including by going to independent arbitration through Acas [The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service] in order to avoid any strike action.”