Odeon pay claim goes in

Union officials hope to start pay talks with cinema chain Odeon later in January.

An interim claim has been submitted by BECTU on behalf of members in the company, which was recently bought out by equity group Terra Firma, owner of another cinema chain UCI.

The union has proposed that the company should award a holding pay increase, effective from January 1 2005, while a full job evaluation and comparability study is conducted. BECTU suspects that pay rates for technicians in Odeon have slipped below market rates.