By David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) -Security staff at the Bank of England have voted to go on strike for 24 hours, starting at 7 a.m. (0700 GMT) on November 13, in protest at a pay freeze, trade union Unite said on Wednesday.
Nearly 40 staff employed by security company Amulet under a contract from the central bank will take industrial action, after their employer said the BoE would not fund a pay rise.
The staff are responsible for guarding the perimeter of the central bank and its main control room.
The BoE holds the world’s second-largest store of gold after the New York Federal Reserve. It has more than 418,000 gold bars in its vaults which are worth over $668 billion after a surge in gold prices this year.
“The Bank of England can more than afford to pay these workers, who do a vital job protecting its assets,” Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said in a statement.
Unite said the security staff typically received a pay rise each March, but had not received one this year after Amulet took over the BoE security contract from another outsourcing company, Mitie, in February.
Amulet had told staff it could not afford to increase pay unless the BoE paid more for the contract, the union added.
Most of the gold at the BoE is stored on behalf of third parties including other central banks.
“We have full confidence in our ability to maintain the security of the Bank and we have robust plans in place to mitigate any possible disruption,” a BoE spokesperson told Reuters in an email.
“We expect our contractors to maintain the service to which they are legally committed and will take appropriate action if they do not,” the spokesperson added.
(Reporting by David Milliken, Editing by Sam Tabahriti)
