B&ES says that it has negotiated a wage agreement for 2013/2014 with the trade union Unite, effective from today (28 January).
The wage agreement affects employers and employees in the heating, ventilating, air conditioning, piping and domestic engineering industry. It addresses a number of points:

· It increases the hourly rates and allowances, daily travelling allowance, premium rates 1 and 2 for overtime working, sickness and injury benefit, and the various lump sum and index benefits payable under the terms of the H&V Operative National Agreement

· It further enhances the entitlement for operatives to participate in an employers' contributory pension scheme - introduced into the terms of the National Agreement under the wage settlement for 2009/10-2010/11 - by increasing the level of the contractual pension contribution payable by employers on behalf of their operatives

· It introduces a number of substantive changes to the terms of the National Agreement

· It introduces the changes mentioned from a range of different dates

Also introduced is a new Responsibility Allowance for the inspection, testing and purging of industrial and commercial scale gas systems and an entitlement to a weekend return fare for operatives who lodge, when travelling home on the middle weekend of the fortnightly cycle of the National Agreement.

Visit www.b-es.org/ for more information