Photo: Striking British Gas workers in the GMB union demonstrate outside the Wales Millennium Stadium today. Picture via GMB Wales & South West on Twitter.
STRIKE BY KEY WORKERS COULD BE THE LONGEST SINCE THE START OF THE PANDEMIC, BUT LESSONS COULD ALSO BE LEARNED FROM THE SUCCESSFUL TAXI DRIVER’S DISPUTE IN WALES.
An historic strike by British Gas workers continues today, with workers staging a protest outside the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, as part of ongoing, UK wide action against attacks on pay and conditions.
Workers in the GMB union have now been on strike for 23 days, and are set to continue as British Gas refuses to take away the threat to fire thousands of workers and rehire them on worse contracts.
Some engineers are set to lose up to £12,000 per year as their terms and conditions are ripped up by bosses.
The attack on the workforce – who have been working throughout the pandemic providing essential services to people stuck at home – comes as British Gas parent firm Centrica announced a £700m profit. Preliminary results for the year ending December 2020 shows the company recorded £699 million in adjusted operating profit.
The ongoing strike is having a massive impact on the firm, however, with hundreds of thousands of repairs and services delayed. The union says that after 22 days of strikes, more than 230,000 homes are in a backlog for repairs and 300,000 planned annual service visits have been cancelled. They accuse British Gas of “misleading the media” when they say the company is catching up on lost ground after 24 hours.
Pressure on bosses is only set to intensify though, with at least 3 further strike days confirmed. The union says the strike could continue into the spring if the threat to sack these key workers and bring them back on worse pay is not withdrawn. Central to the new changes is the decimation of enhanced anti social hours pay.
Justin Bowden, GMB National Secretary, says that when British Gas decided to attack pay, it was already a profitable company and yesterday’s financial results confirm this.
He said that this proved there was no need to “hurt” workers and customers and added that “refusing to take fire and rehire off the table is the main obstacle” to resolving the dispute.
The strike is possibly the longest which has been staged during the pandemic, and the determination of workers to continue is notable given the economic crisis. But many are digging in and won’t accept such a fundamental assault on their livelihoods, especially when their labour has kept people warm during the long winter.
One engineer, John, told voice.wales that if he stayed with the company, the new contracts will result in him losing out on around £10k-£12k.
“For me personally, it’ll mean a significantly reduced household income,” he said, adding that he’d recently taken out a mortgage.
“I’m disgusted by the way we’ve been treated…This is my first strike [but] it has been understandably a very different given the current pandemic.”
The strike is no doubt complicated by the Covid, making marches and big pickets more difficult to organise given current restrictions. At the end of 2020 however, workers in Cardiff’s taxi trade held a Covid safe protest outside Welsh Government offices in cars, to demand emergency lockdown pay. It was loud and angry, gaining huge press coverage and having an immediate impact.
If British Gas workers did something similar in their vans, it could be a game changer.
