08/07/2024
📍 Important Update from the team.
In 2023, Valley Vets entered into a voluntary collective agreement with Unite the Union (Unite), and earlier this year we entered into salary negotiations. Whilst our salary reviews are always compared to industry benchmarking and benchmark well, the union proposed very significant increases, initially 25% increase in costs, expressing that pay and conditions in the veterinary sector as a whole are considered to be poor and wished our practice to be the practice to set new higher levels for the industry. Unfortunately, as a business we would not be able to sustain such increases within Valley Vets without a very high risk of redundancies and/or closing sites or passing on very large fee increases. We know that veterinary fees have already increased over time, and this scale of increase is not something we would be prepared to pass on to our clients. We are committed to improving terms and conditions for all our fantastic team and will continue to do so in a proportionate and sustainable way.
We are saddened that we were unable to reach a mutual agreement and on Tuesday 2nd July, we were notified that the union members have exercised their right to take industrial action and will be striking from 16th to 30th July 2024.
It goes without saying that our priority is, and always will be, our patients, their owners and of course our team. We respect that union members within our team may exercise their right to participate in this industrial action, and so we are currently putting provisions in place to ensure that above all else, patient welfare isn't compromised. As we do not currently know what our staffing levels will be, and to ensure we can run a full emergency service, we have made the very difficult decision to close our branch surgeries in Ystrad Mynach, Caerphilly, Pentyrch and Gabalfa. We will also be closing our referral services for the duration of the strike period, but a specialist emergency exotics service will remain in place as usual on weekdays.
As a minimum, rest assured that we will be providing a 24/7 emergency service from our hospital site in Gwaelod y Garth, and we will be working with our clients to accommodate appointments for pets that are non-urgent but time sensitive, such as second vaccinations, allergy injections etc as best we can.
Thank you for your continued patience, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our hospital team on 02920 001454 if you have any questions.
We hope to reopen our branches on 30th July at 9am as usual, however should we anticipate any more disruption to our services we will update you as soon as possible
We very much appreciate and value your continued support. We only hope that you'll continue to stand by us, as many of you have done for so many years. 💛
