More than 40,000 BT workers will strike at the end of the month
BT workers will go on strike on the 29 July and 1 August, the Communication Worker Union (CWU) have confirmed.
Announcing the news this afternoon, the union said action may cause “significant issues” for remote workers and would have a “serious effect” on the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband.
CWU general secretary Dave Ward said in a statement: “For the first time since 1987, strike action will now commence at BT Group.
“This is not a case of an employer refusing to meet a union’s demands – this is about an employer refusing to meet us whatsoever.
“The serious disruption this strike may cause is entirely down to [chief executive] Philip Jansen and his friends, who have chosen to stick two fingers up to their own workforce.”
He added:”Without CWU members in BT Group, there would have been no home-working revolution, and vital technical infrastructure may have malfunctioned or been broken when our country most needed it”.
Around 30,000 Openreach engineers and 9,000 BT call centre workers voted in favour of a walkout last month, with Openreach members voting 95 per cent in favour of strikes on a 74 per cent turnout and BT workers by 91 per cent on a 58 per cent turnout.
While CWU members at EE also voted in favour of action, it failed by just eight votes to reach the legal union threshold, meaning EE won’t be able to serve notice of action.
CWU rejected the “incredibly low” £1,500 flat-rate pay rise offered by BT to 58,000 frontline workers in April, with the union stating that it was effectively a relative pay cut.
While CWU gave BT notice to provide a “significantly improved offer” following the vote, BT failed to come back with an alternative offer.
A BT Group spokesperson said in a statement last week: “At the start of this year, we were in exhaustive discussions with the CWU that lasted for two months, trying hard to reach an agreement on pay. When it became clear that we were not going to reach an accord, we took the decision to go ahead with awarding our team member and frontline colleagues the highest pay award in more than 20 years, effective 1st April.
“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.”
Speaking with Morning Wire following the initial ballot results, CWU Deputy General Secretary Andy Kerr said that while many of the call centre workers aren’t actually located in the capital, the fall out of any strike action will be felt particularly hard in London.
“Business in the city would be a big issue, and firms could be hit hard”, he said, explaining how Openreach engineers support top London boards’ tech infrastructures.
The former state-owned monopoly is responsible for answering 999 calls, which Kerr suggested to Morning Wire would not be impacted by any strike action.