Valley Vets and BVU industrial action
We are disappointed that the British Veterinary Union (BVU) in Unite plans to go ahead with further industrial action at Valley Vets from Tuesday 6th August to Friday 23rd August as this will cause further disruption to services for clients.
While striking team members will be returning to work on Tuesday 30th July, we plan to keep all four branch surgeries at Ystrad Mynach, Caerphilly, Pentyrch and Gabalfa closed to ensure continuity of services for clients. We will prioritise emergency cases and first opinion work at our veterinary hospital in Gwaelod y Garth.
We are incredibly grateful to those team members providing emergency care during the industrial action to ensure pets needing treatment are treated, and for the support we have received from the wider veterinary profession during this difficult time.
As a responsible business, we are committed to sustainably improving terms and conditions, including pay, for our team members. This has included increasing holidays and improving sick and maternity pay, which have improved significantly since Valley Vets joined VetPartners. In addition, we have introduced life insurance cover and reduced cost health insurance, as well as Health Shield for all employees. We have also increased CPD allowances for all team members and introduced volunteer days. These benefits are in addition to increased pay levels, whilst total pay levels have increased by almost 32% since 2020, prior to the April 2024 pay increases. We understand this is ahead of Unite’s own recommendation for pay increases over the same period.
The people costs as a percentage of revenue at Valley Vets was 57%, prior to the April increase - significantly higher than industry averages.
The BVU in Unite requested pay and conditions increases initially that would have raised employment costs by over 25%, and they are currently requesting increases which would raise this by 15% which would make Valley Vets unsustainable without a significant reduction in the workforce, something we are trying to avoid.
After benchmarking roles against the wider profession, Valley Vets sit in the upper quartile of veterinary sector salary levels for all job roles. During annual salary reviews, we prioritised lowest-paid team members with a 7.27% pay increase, while higher paid colleagues also received an increase at a lower rate. Over time, and when sustainably affordable, we have been seeking to pay team members the real living wage.
Currently the lowest paid members of the permanent team are paid an average of 1.6% below the real living wage.
We are also well aware of the affordability of veterinary fees, and that is why we felt fees paid by our clients could not be raised any further to support significant salary increases demanded by the BVU in Unite. Fee increases have not kept pace with increases in costs in recent years, and we have seen profitability fall over the last few years.
We will be providing a 24/7 emergency service during the period of the strike action.
We will also be working with our clients to accommodate appointments for pets that are non-urgent but time sensitive, such as second vaccinations and allergy injections, as best we can.
