CWU Begin Final Day of Latest BT Strikes, But Worse May Follow

Up to 38,000 workers at UK broadband and telecoms giant BT (including Openreach) have today begun the final day of their latest round of strikes over a pay dispute (the 8th day overall). But the Communications Workers Union (CWU) claims that BT’s CEO, Philip Jansen, still “won’t even negotiate” with them.

The strikes have so far caused a manageable degree of disruption for the BT Group, particularly on its engineering side where there have been some delays (e.g. new service provisions and some repair work), although thus far the operator has done a reasonable job of mitigating that as much as it can. But it probably doesn’t hurt that the media spotlight of late has been more focused on matters of wider political and economic turmoil than these strikes.

However, despite the fact that the CWU often states “40,000 workers, including 999 call handlers, BT call centre workers and Openreach engineers” are taking strike action, neither side has released any solid figures to show how many are actually striking on the day. The CWU cannot force all of their related members to strike, and not all of the stated employees voted in favour of it.

The latest round of strikes – occurring across four days – started on Thursday 6th October, then continued on Monday 10th October, Thursday 20th October and are also taking place today. The union’s next step will be to try and convince some of BT’s biggest shareholders to pressure the operator into accepting their proposals, although it’s unclear how much mileage they’ll get out of that tactic.

Dave Ward, CWU General Secretary, said:

“Meeting the shareholders of BT Group is the natural next step – it should demonstrate to the company that we won’t relent until we have exposed them and changed the course of this dispute.

Alongside these external pressures, BT workers will take further strike action if needed.

Morale is at an all-time low – we have an out of control, out of touch CEO who is counting his money while his employees are using foodbanks.

This is just not right, and we will not stop fighting until our members gain a proper pay rise.”

History tends to show that strikes usually increase in both their duration and disruption the longer a dispute like this goes unresolved, which could make for a pretty grim Christmas period if it combines with the usual seasonal delays and holidays. At the same time, surging inflation is continuing to cause a headache, and it may now continue for longer than previously expected.

In case anybody has forgotten. The core dispute relates to BT’s pledge to award workers a £1,500 consolidated pay increase to their annual salaries earlier this year (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, at the same time as all this was occurring, awarded himself a 32% pay increase.

We should add that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 10.1% in the 12 months to September 2022, up from 9.9% in August and returning to July’s recent high. Last month, the British Chambers of Commerce predicted that UK inflation is expected to reach a “peak” of 14% in Q4 2022 (the previous projection was 10%). But the CPI rate is expected to slow to 5% in 2023, and finally return to the Bank of England’s target of 2% in 2024. Inflation is expected to outpace growth of earnings by over 3:1 in Q4 2022, said the BCC.

Meanwhile, BT has repeatedly stated that they have the necessary processes in place for tackling large-scale colleague absences, which they added would “minimise any disruption for our customers” and “keep the country connected“.