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BT call centre staff “can’t afford to buy themselves or their children food” while the company pays its CEO millions of pounds.
More than 40,000 of the telecom giant’s workers, mostly engineers and call centre staff represented by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), are going on strike on July 29 and August 1 as part of a pay dispute. This is the first time BT workers are going on strike since 1987.
Caroline Gillies, who’s from West Derby and has worked at BT for 25 years, said it was “a really good employer” until the arrival of senior management figures like Philip Jansen, who became the company’s chief executive in 2019. The CEO received a pay rise of 32% to £3.5m this year while refusing to give more than an average raise of 5% to his staff.
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The relatively young workers at BT’s Warrington call centre, who Caroline represents as a CWU branch representative, earn a minimum of £20,000 a year, rising to around £40,000 for staff employed on old terms and conditions. When the CWU balloted for strike action, 95.8% voted in favour of it, with a 75% turnout.
Full-time union rep Caroline, 47, said: “No one wants to go on strike. We’ve all got some kind of loyalty to the brand of BT and we all want to see it do well. But when people started to find out that the CEO himself received a 32% increase – and they are the people who absolutely contributed to the profits the business made – that’s when people became angry.”
BT gave workers a £1,500 pay rise in April – the highest in more than 20 years – which the company said represents a raise of 3% to 8%, mostly benefiting its lowest paid workers. This was done without the agreement of the CWU – or its members – which is calling for a pay rise of 10%.
At the time, BT’s CEO said: “While we have continued to extend and strengthen our networks to support the country’s recovery, the pandemic has hit our financial performance, like that of most companies. We know that the cost of living continues to rise and by making this award, we’re ensuring that our lower paid workers will benefit most and as soon as possible.”
The telecom company giant made £2bn in profits and paid shareholders dividends of £700m in the year to March 2022, The Guardian reports. But BT is refusing to reopen its 2022 pay review, with a spokesperson saying it “already made the best award we could”. Caroline said this refusal to negotiate “just sends out a clear message that they’ve got total disregard for their employees. It’s total disrespect”.
With inflation due to reach 11% by October, its workers are struggling to make ends meet. Particularly in the last six months, Caroline’s branch of the CWU has seen a rise in the number of people asking for help from the branch welfare fund, which is there to give up to £250 to members struggling financially. The union also has a national welfare fund for people in serious difficulty, like those facing evictions.
Caroline said: “Someone came to me the other day asking for welfare – they had £2 on the electricity, and it was on their emergency [credit]. Fuel costs as well, people are struggling to actually get into work with the price of fuel at the moment.”
She added: “People can’t afford to eat. People have got children at home and they can’t afford to buy themselves or their children food. In the North East at a particular call centre in an EE branch, they were setting up foodbanks for the people to access.”
Andy Mercer, a member of the CWU’s national executive committee, said the union is prepared to sit down with BT for “meaningful negotiations”. But 30-year-old, who is from Seaforth, said any negotiated outcome must be acceptable to the union’s members.
He told the ECHO: “Nobody working for what they say is a ‘blue chip’ company should have to go to a foodbank to sustain an existence. With the cost of living increasing and wages not rising anywhere near in line with that inflation, things will only get worse. But there doesn’t seem to be any acceptance from BT that that is the case for some of these workers.”
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