Industrial action planned at Amnesty International will not go ahead after the number of workers required to take part was not achieved

Plans for a strike at an international charity have been called off for now.

Staff at Amnesty International had been due to strike over a dispute about redundancies.

The trade union Unite balloted its 300 members at the human rights organisation for action, however the ballot failed to reach the voting threshold, meaning strike action will not take place at the charity.

In June, Amnesty announced it was planning to cut 146 posts, which would result in 93 job losses, after admitting a £17m hole in its budget to the end of 2020. However in September the organisation said the number of jobs cut would be reduced to around 20 as the result of a number of voluntary redundancies and a recruitment freeze since 2018.

Unite pressed ahead with a ballot for strike action but an union spokesman said voting had fallen just below the 50% threshold.

Alan Scott, regional coordinating officer at Unite, said members had voted overwhelmingly for industrial action but difficulties in voting meant the number of workers taking part hadn’t been achieved.

He said: "The challenge on meeting the threshold was extreme because many of our members now work in offices abroad and, even with a ballot period of six weeks, many of them did not received the papers because of the state of the local postal service," said Scott.

"The effect of the Tory legislation has been to deny workers their democratic right to take action.

"Had members been able to vote electronically, as Unite proposed when the legislation was introduced, the threshold would have been easily exceeded."

Amnesty said the trade union had informed it that the ballot had failed to reach the threshold.