In the wake of a vote by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), BT confirmed that it will not raise the pay increase it implemented in April and will instead brace itself for industrial action.
At a press conference today (30th June), the CWU – the union for all BT Group employees – announced that on a 74.8% turnout, the union’s 30,000 Openreach engineers have voted by 95.8% to take strike action. This number was followed by workers in BT, approximately 9,000 of whom are call centre workers, who have voted by 91.5% on a 58.2% turnout for strike action.
The vote by EE members fell short.
BT issued the following statement: “We have confirmed to the CWU that we won’t be re-opening the 2022 pay review, having already made the best award we could. We’re balancing the complex and competing demands of our stakeholders and that includes making once-in-a-generation investments to upgrade the country’s broadband and mobile networks, vital for the UK economy and for BT Group’s future – including our people. While we respect the choice of our colleagues who are CWU members to strike, we will work to minimise any disruption and keep our customers and the country connected. We have tried and tested processes for large scale colleague absences to minimise any disruption for our customers and these were proved during the pandemic.”
BT Group awarded a fully consolidated pay increase to its Team Member and frontline colleagues of £1,500. This represents a pay rise of around 5% on average and 8% for the lowest paid and it was effective from 1 April 2022.
CWU argues that that in the context of RPI inflation levels hitting 11.7% last month, this is a dramatic real-terms pay cut. It is also in the context of the company making £1.3 billion in annual profit, with the company’s CEO, Philip Jansen, gaining a £3.5 million pay package – a 32% increase.
CWU has notified BT management that they will be holding two days of industrial action for its BT and Openreach members on the 29th July and 1st August, 2022.
https://newsroom.bt.com/bt-group-response-to-notification-by-the-cwu-of-industrial-action/
