More than 40,000 BT and Openreach workers will walk out on Friday 29th July and Monday 1st August, after workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action over pay.
By Ka Long Tung. Cover image: BT Offices in Cardiff, where workers will strike from Friday, Ka Long Tung.
The union said that workers have reported to them that company managers are using misinformation to dissuade workers from taking part in the days ahead.
Several BT offices in Wales along with others across the UK will see picket lines on Friday and Monday in a major strike by call-centre workers over pay.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) issued the locations of picket lines on Thursday, with a large number of locations across Wales including Aberystwyth, Bangor, Wrexham, Newport, Tredegar, Cardiff, Merthyr, Swansea and more.
The national strike was announced after BT Group CEO Philip Jansen had refused the offer to talk, the union said.
Days before the planned strike days, the CWU warned that BT managers were using “pathetic and desperate” efforts to undermine the industrial action. “Nobody should be intimidated in any way, shape or form,” said Andy Kerr, the CWU Deputy General Secretary, in response to what the union called “union-busting”.
The CWU said workers reported that the managers had told apprentices that they were not authorised to strike; non-union members that their participation was illegal; and workers that management must be informed of their decision to take strike action.
The union said these were lies. Kerr urged workers should report related incidents to the CWU. “We are here to help. Whether it’s myself, whether it’s the executive, or whether it’s your branch reps or just your fellow workers. There’s no need to feel as if you’re alone here,” said Kerr.
“What is really important now – we’re at that phrase of this dispute where they are testing our collective strength,” said Dave Ward, the CWU General Secretary. “We want to see as many of our members as possible joining us on those picket lines.
The CWU represents about 40,000 of the BT Group’s 100,000 workforces. The ballot on industrial action over pay shows that in BT, “yes” votes of 91.5% were recorded on a 58.2% turnout. Whereas in Openreach, a BT subsidiary, 95.8% of members cast “yes” on a 74.8% turnout.
Workers at BT are mainly call centre staff who assist customers with services including understanding their bills, how to use products and arranging engineers to visit. Openreach’s workers are mostly engineers who maintain the UK’s internet infrastructure.
Despite the approval from BT and Openreach, in EE, the mobile operator, eight votes were short of the 50% threshold required to mandate industrial action.
“We all know we’ve won the argument about whether or not BT can afford to pay our members a better pay rise,” said Ward. He referenced the 9.4% inflation rate which hit a 40-year high.
In April, BT gave 58,000 workers a £1,500 pay rise claiming its biggest award in two decades, which translates to between 3 and 8%. “What they’ve put on the table is just not enough for our members,” said Ward.
The CWU said that BT workers deserve a better pay rise as CEO Jansen received a 32% increase in the overall pay up from £2,628,000 in 2021 to £3,460,000 in 2022.
“The whole of the industry, the call centre industry is undervalued. Undervalued in terms of the job they do,” said Karen Rose, the CWU President. “People see these jobs as not necessarily having skills. Well, they do have skills because to have that conversation with people is having a skill.”
Rose said that CWU members should encourage their colleagues to join the union to ask for better pay.
Kerr also says that they should have a conversation with workers who are not striking. He also reminds members that they should do it by persuasion but not by harassment in the ways that some BT managers had been doing to their members.
Ward says that the office of CWU will lose a day’s pay and put that into the hardship fund to support the workers in need. “That’s exactly what we should do if we’re asking our members to go on strike.”
