Thousands of BT and Openreach Workers Head Back to Picket Lines
Up to 38,000 of BT and Openreach’s unionised workers will today be heading back to hundreds of picket lines across the UK as they begin a second major national strike, which is part of an ongoing pay dispute. The strike, which will run through today and tomorrow, is expected to cause more delays to service provisions etc.
Not to sound too much like a broken record on this, but here’s the somewhat obligatory recap. The core issue, as raised by the Communications Workers Union (CWU), stems from a dispute over pay. BT previously announced that they planned to award workers a £1,500 consolidated pay increase to their annual salaries (up from an original offer of £1,200). The operator said this would be the “largest [pay rise] … in over 20-years” for 58,000 of their UK frontline and Team Member colleagues – representing an increase of up to 8% for some colleagues and more than 3% for even the highest paid frontline workers.
However, the Deputy General Secretary (Telecoms and Financial Services) of the CWU, Andy Kerr, who had previously called for a pay rise of 10% to recognise the “contribution our members have made to the business”, rejected the offer and warned that, given the surging level of inflation, it would have represented a “relative pay cut“. Kerr also noted that BT’s CEO had awarded himself a 32% pay increase.
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So far, there doesn’t appear to have been any move toward an agreement, which is what triggered the operator’s first major national two-day strike since 1987 (that was held on Friday 29th July and Monday 1st August). As a result, a second strike has now begun.
Dave Ward, CWU General Secretary, said:
“The disruption caused by this strike is entirely down to Philip Jansen and his ridiculous refusal to speak to his workers about a fair pay deal.
These are the same workers who kept the country connected during the pandemic. Without CWU members, there would have been no home-working revolution, and vital technical infrastructure may have malfunctioned or been broken when our country most needed it.
These people have performed phenomenally under great strain and have been given a real-terms pay cut for a reward, while Jansen has rewarded himself a 32% pay increase off the backs of their work.
The reason for the strike is simple: workers will not accept a massive deterioration in their living standards.
We won’t have bosses using Swiss banks while workers are using food banks.
BT Group workers are saying: enough is enough. They have serious determination to win, and are not going to stop until they are listened to.”
A BT Group spokesperson said.. again:
“We know that our colleagues are dealing with the impacts of high inflation and, although we’re disappointed, we respect their decision to strike. We have made the best pay award we could and we are in constant discussions with the CWU to find a way forward from here. In the meantime, we will continue to work to minimise any disruption and keep our customers and the country connected”.
The CWU’s press release claims that the “strike action is also likely to have a serious effect on the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband, and may cause significant issues for those working from home“. But the first strike did not appear to cause any major disruption to the national network itself (much of that operates autonomously) and only had a mild impact on new network deployments / repairs / provisions (here).
As before, BT says they have the necessary processes in place for tackling large-scale colleague absences, which they’ve previously said would “minimise any disruption for our customers” and “keep the country connected“. We did also ask both BT and the CWU if they knew roughly how many workers did go on strike the first time around, but neither side could provide that.
Nevertheless, the more strikes that occur, the greater the disruption. Eventually delays to new provisions, repairs and other work could start to become more than a mere short-term annoyance. This would be true not only for the telecoms giant, but also their customers – both end-users and network operators / ISPs alike etc.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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CEO awarded himself salary increase from money generated by those striking. If they were increasing salaries year to year covering rising life costs plus %, there haven’t had issues today.
awww boohoo. Some of us got 1% pay rises, or no pay rises. What makes them so special? All I see is people moaning about their money. Rightly so. But they don’t give two hoots about you and yours that doesn’t get any rise at all. But we’re supposed to support them to get theirs.
It is actually your problem No Franks. I took care about myself so I am not complaining, if you can’t do the same then at least stop moaning about others trying.
Frank then you should have done the same as them and demand more and got your union to strike just because you wasn’t willing to fight for a decent wage does not mean they should bend over and take it
Bt engineers are already payed well and above what industry pay is
Many would disagree. Over the last 3-4 years they would have seen pay freezes, significantly detrimental changes to pensions, their share investments diminished by at least 25%, relocation and many facing forced redundancy. Its hardly been a bed of roses.
I work in this sector and bt are payed most so they can be unhappy but they won’t get anymore if they left
You can’t even spell ‘paid’ so not a massive surprise you aren’t coining it in.
4 letters.
Do they really deserve a double digit pay rise? people have had it too good for too long.
We are talking about £1,500 a year. Now divide that by 12 and take out a tax and pension. This will give them less than £100 a month. Average home electricity bill is now how big, £80?
Yes, they do. People shouldn’t see their income drop in real terms if their productivity in real terms stays the same or increases.
Crikey, far too good for far too long? Based on what?
The last decade where we’ve been governed by Tories has seen something you might heard of called austerity. Wages have stagnated, living standards have declined, social services are at breaking point, food banks have exploded in presence, schools are crumbling and education results have declined, fire service cut back, policing cut back and massive increase in crime and antisocial behaviour, NHS has declined with biggest waiting lists and backlogs since records started. Public transport is poor, expensive and unreliable. Cost of living is massive.
What’s been too good? Are you an old codger who is going to bring up the war or something? Please do tell.
I think some here are upset and jealous they haven’t had their own pay rise
@Peter, They need a rise to pay for their essentials like hair extensions and fake tan.
This is exactly what is happening here. Losers who can’t take care about themselves are simply jealous.
How can anyone be jealous of these people striking? to date they have achieved nothing other than a few days lost pay.
I wonder if the lower paid staff are aware, the more wages they lose striking the less benefit obtained from a pay rise should they win, which they probably wont, it could be likened to the law of diminishing returns. Should the Union win the only employee’s likely to benefit long term, are the older better paid BTPS members approaching retirement.
Telecoms are in a transformation phase with future opportunities in DWDM, IP, and 5G. If I was near the start of my career, I’d be looking at training opportunities in technologies offering the best pay and prospects, not a short term pay fix which could fizzle away over time. Once all the FTTP/5G rollouts are completed, the number of splicer/cable Engineer and rigger jobs will likely drop dramatically as the industry moves from provisioning to a maintenance phase. All the PSTN jobs will disappear at the end of 2025, with many older staff retiring and the younger Switch Engineers either retraining or going out of the door. Adding everything up, I don’t see the logic of striking for BT staff near the start of their careers.
You’re welcome to give up some of your pension given the packages these staff are on are less favorable to subsidise it.
There something so special and remarkable about you that you think the present Openreach employees should be content with less than you have?
I really have no opinion on this: withdrawing their labour is their right. However people on far more generous retirement plans than these guys could dream of criticising them leaves a bitter taste.
“There something so special and remarkable about you that you think the present Openreach employees should be content with less than you have?”
You know nothing about me, you’re possibly assuming I worked for BT, but I didn’t; I actually joined Mercury (Cable & Wireless) in 1988, after I left the Royal Signals, and spent over 20 years as a Field Engineer before moving into Submarine Cable Operations for my last 10 years of employment.
On the subject of pensions I was lucky enough to be in a Defined Benefit scheme, but the scheme was first changed to include salary sacrifice around 2010/11, and I chose to make the maximum contribution matchable by the company, which altered my natural retirement age to 63 from 60, but it would have been 85 without any contributions. It didn’t matter though since Vodafone ended the Final salary scheme soon after taking over C&WW and put everyone on the same DC pension scheme. I was made redundant in 2019, 21 months before I was due to retire and received a 12 months redundancy payout. After my 60th Birthday I started recieving my Army pension and C&W Final salary pension which added together came to around £19,000. My first pension rise, this year, for both my Army Pension and my C&W pension was just over 2%, and going off the paperwork the maximum payrise I can ever expect on my C&W pension is around 4.2%.
I think you’ll find that I’m no better off than most of the current staff at BT, and possibly considerably worse off than the Engineers on the BTPS scheme, so you’ll excuse me if I neither give up any of my pension, or have any sympathy for the current strike action.
Alot of openreach engineers have had it easy for too long. Sitting in their vans with there feet up reading the paper or dossing off jobs. Now they want a pay rise … for what exactly ?? They should be lucky they even have a job for the amount off work alot of them do. Shouldn’t even be paid minimum wage. Greedy c****
So they’ve made you redundant because of that?
OR is a very different company now.
GPS tracking and case management systems prevent this out dated stereotype you describe.
Going by the standard of your English you should be grateful for any job let alone one with the conditions you describe.
Hehe ….no chip on the shoulder there pal. Your a past engineer for a reason.
@An Engineer
Is perfect BBC English a prerequisite? does me speaking with an accent exclude me Jimmy?
I think CEOs that are able to receive a 32 percent pay rise are having it too easy.
My company made record profits over the duration of the last few years; the upper echelon get millions in bonuses while the rank and file generally get single digit pay rises that are soon eaten up by wider economic turmoil.
It is time the wealth was shared a bit more evenly.
if ceo,s were to take pay rises in single figures they would still be taking a pay rise well above the workers wildest expectations awarding himself 32 percent is morally wrong and the government needs to legislate against abuse like this you can not expect the workforce to be happy when they see this sort of thing going on
CEO’s pay rises are normally voted on at the AGM, as a shareholder you can attend and vote, but did you? if not then its your own fault and all those other employee shareholders who keep complaining about it.
Commenter “Stop Complaining” clearly didn’t get the memo….the majority share holders are the ones that choose the CEO. It’s not a 1 vote 1 person scenario. It’s 100 million quids worth of votes from someone who’s only drive is to make another 100 million, even at the expense of suppressing wages.
Get it now?
Jees these people need to pick up a book and learn something.
@The Truth Hurts
Jees you think you have an answer to everything.
So you think shareholders shouldn’t bother to vote because others have a larger holding in the company or did you just dodge that question?
So holding an employer and its customers to ransom by withholding labour is fair on those customers? are you saying all employees in all companies deserve a pay rise regardless of if they add value to the business.
Openreach engineers have a right to strike,as do we in the BT call centres who have also work hard during the Pandemic and if you look st what is mostly earned it is just over minimum wage. It’s all of BT across the board and its the call centres is where the foodbanks are/where as the lowest paid worker are being effect more. As for grammer or spelling I have dyslexia does that mean Im not great at my job or have a opinion? Thanks to the engineers who worked with us through hard times and support us keeping the country connected. Finally I love my job (and feel lucky) as do the majority of employees. Our work is to help people in anyway we can and care, it should be part of the foundation of any company in this line of work and I think we achieve this, but it should also be reflected to its own employees.
I don’t know why people are so anti pay rise for BT & Openreach workers.
The BT is a multi-billion profit making firm. A firm that can easily afford to prevent staff taking a real-world pay cut especially now inflation is set to hit 22% next year.
Why wouldn’t you want to help staff? Is there some sort of mental stop or incompetence that prevents them realising a national-sized business needs to step up to the plate at these very difficult times. It should be about giving handouts to a handful of silver spoon fed overgrown babies sitting at the top. It’s time the CEO and his pals actually did some hard graft and do something that actually benefits their staff rather than just lining their own already fat and heavy pockets.
As Spock famously said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”….
Help the staff for gods sake and stop profiteering from everyone else’s misery.
“As Spock famously said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.””
Funny you should use that quote because I agree with the statement, but there’s an argument that the strikers are the few.
I don’t care what any vested interest union rep says, high wage rises feed back into inflation, wage-price spirals are well understood. If BT, Royal Mail, and Rail companies gave a payrise of 10%+, then every employee in every company would demand the same. Now pensioners, like me, have increases capped around 5% or below, and there are many who have no power to demand higher pay rises, so the 10%+ winners will contribute to the impovrishment of the many who can’t demand big pay increases, as inflation will hurt them dramatically more. To hold back inflation the BOE has one blunt tool, which is interest rate rises, so anyone with a big mortgage could potentially see their mortgage increase faster than any pay rise they may win. Pay rises need to be measured over time, not big pay rises as soon as there’s a leap in inflation, otherwise everyone will eventually lose out.
If inflation is 22% then a 10% pay rise is not inflationary.
What is inflationary is price rises of inflation +3.9%
Many workers will not care what a vested interest EX Telephone Engineer pensioner says.
EX TE is getting an index linked pension rise up to 5% each year.
Those workers he is attacking are not on a pension with any protection against inflation like him. BT has, like most firms, significantly reduced pensions for workers and when they got away with it the first time, they then did it again.
Not only have BT staff had year after year of real terms pay cuts, they also face impoverishment in old age.
@FibreBubble
Are you ex BT with an active or deferred 5% index linked pension by any chance?