RE: Strike ballot5 Nov 2020 14:29
I posted on this about a week ago, it’s below, one years pay is a good deal if you look from outside, the issue for staff will be that BT has offered various voluntary deals over the years, many of which gave more than one year. People will naturally say you have done it in the past, why not now. Personally I think CWU will not get the support, the younger people will not want to damage there future, and there are a lot of older staff with many years service that just want to go, so a year then there pension would be good for them.
Staff reductions have been going on for over 20 years, on a voluntary basis, with differing terms ranging from as low as 6 months pay, up to a long time, when some got 3 years and enhanced pension years. Staff have been moved out of rolls that have needed less people, and retrained in new rolls where additional people were needed, also some areas took on additional work that there staff had skills in and were given any additional training. So the workforce has reduced numbers and moved people into other skill sets as needed . The engineering workforce now faces 2 main issues with respect to Openreach. They need to keep in the short term, say 5 years, most of the copper skilled people, to keep that network running whilst increasing the number of people doing the Fibre network build to keep that on track and increase premises Fibred year on year. During the say next 5 years some may well become double skilled, copper and Fibre build, but after that there will come a time where they will need less and less people to run the new network. That is when the staff numbers will fall dramatically in OR. Other parts of BT will see less engineering staff needed during the next few years as well. Less exchange switches to run, less planning people, datacoms, end user switch’s, ie ISDN30 products etc... I would expect these areas to see a big percentage head count loss compared to OR.
BT have managed to loose staff on a voluntary basis for many years, and I think they should be able to continue in that vain. There are a lot of people in there 50s that will, as they have in the past, put there hands up to leave on up to a years money, with some taking there pension early to offset there income...
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