ISPs See Minimal Impact from BT and Openreach Workers Strike

The recent two-day national strike by up to 38,000 of BT and Openreach’s unionised workers (here) – due to a dispute over pay – does not appear to have caused any significant problems for either the operator or its customers. At least that is the feedback we’ve had from UK broadband ISPs and alternative networks.

At the time of writing, neither Openreach nor the Communications Workers Union (CWU) could provide an official estimate of how many BT and Openreach workers actually did strike. But a union source told ISPreview.co.uk of how they’d estimated that less than 2% of the unionised workforce, including management, went into work on Friday (29th Jul) and Monday (1st Aug).

Prior to the strike, both BT and Openreach had been adamant that they had the necessary processes in place for tackling large-scale colleague absences, which they said would “minimise any disruption for our customers” and “keep the country connected“. In terms of Openreach, we expected that the biggest impact would be felt in terms of some delays to new service provisions (installations).

Naturally, we were keen to know how much all of this translated to ISPs and alternative network (AltNet) operators, both of which depend upon Openreach’s ability to deliver certain connectivity and infrastructure access solutions (e.g. PIA). Suffice to say, we’ve spent the past few days quietly asking for some off-the-record feedback, but first, the official line.

An Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We kept the network running safely and effectively, as we do every day, and there were no national incidents or outages. We’re continuing to assess the impact but our focus is firmly on serving customers and getting back to business as usual.”

Openreach’s statement was echoed by all the retail broadband ISPs we engaged, which agreed that the impact had been “minimal” and there were no major or prolonged issues as a result. As for AltNets, they reported some delays to service provision and even fault investigations (adding between a few days and up to a week to some appointments), but nothing unexpected or unmanageable.

At this point we should highlight that it was not the goal of the CWU to cause maximum damage to a major national provider of critical telecoms services, but rather to draw attention to their pay dispute and encourage BT back to the negotiating table. The catch is that BT does not appear to have blinked and has offered no indication of any greater willingness to shift their position, at least not publicly.

However, unresolved pay disputes have a tendency to be followed by more strikes, which could conceivably be longer and thus more disruptive in the future. Delays to provisions of up to a week can be managed, but such issues would become more of a costly concern if key jobs start being hit by much longer delays (e.g. a month or longer).

At such a point, both ISPs and AltNets may find it increasingly difficult to tolerate Openreach’s decision, however understandable it may be, to declare such events as a Matter Beyond Our Reasonable Control (MBORC) and thus not subject to compensation payments.

Finally, we asked the CWU what their next steps might be and whether more strikes were likely, although at present they don’t seem to be making such a commitment: “In terms of the union’s next step, we are in the same position as we were before the strike – we are still calling on Jansen [BT’s CEO] to commit to meaningful negotiations for a decent, dignified pay deal,” said a spokesperson for the union.

We should add that a number of MPs from different parties, such as the SNP’s Steven Bonnar (here) and Labour’s Stephan Morgan (here), have since written to BT and the UK Government in order to express solidarity with the operator’s workers and to encourage a fair resolution to the pay dispute.