Over the last twelve months, the workforce in Enterprise has been at the forefront as BT has accelerated the attacks on its workforce. We were the first in line for redundancies which were as callous as they were unnecessary. These attacks were all the more galling when the rest of the country was applauding you as the Key Workers who were keeping the country and the UK economy connected, during unprecedented times.
Since those attacks started BT has now turned its attention to our colleagues in Technology, Global and BT Group and other areas of the company. Their attack on the workforce is spreading and more and more people are now faced with the same treatment of redundancies and attacks on grading that Enterprise members have suffered over the last year. All of this is happening before the Better Workplace Programme has even started. The fact is, no BT worker is safe from these people.
The irony of course, is that those responsible for these attacks are the very same people that have presided over a company that has seen its share price halve in 12 months to a point where it is now lower than when BT was first privatised in 1984. As a direct result of this low share price, for the first time ever BT sees itself in danger of a predatory take-over bid and has had to hire financial bouncers to protect itself from such an attempt.
They are expecting you to pay the price of their failure.
The leadership of Enterprise cannot excuse themselves from their responsibility in this. They did the dirty work that has caused the lives of Enterprise workers to be turned upside down. We are going to invite you in the next few weeks to give your assessment of the senior people who either supported these attacks or meekly nodded when they were told what to do. You will get the opportunity to tell them how they are performing, telling them where they are failing and setting them their objectives for the next 6 months.
It is now crucial that everybody gets behind this union and Counts themselves in to the union’s campaign and start fighting back. https://www.cwu.org/campaign/count-me-in/.
In a move that is as cynical as it is unnecessary, Global has announced that they are putting five (yes five) people, at risk of redundancy in its Global Contract management unit.
While management has said that its aim is to redeploy these people, they are still insisting on placing them ‘at risk’ of redundancy. With such a small number, redundancy should not be a consideration.
If that’s not bad enough, the reason these people are at risk is because management are off-shoring their work. This is a direct breach of the redundancy agreement which holds BT to on-shoring work to prevent redundancies. Global are doing the direct opposite; off-shoring work to create redundancies!
No team member in Global should be under any illusion; nobody’s job is safe. The company is moving towards the complete abandonment of redeployment as a way of mitigating the effects of change. This is not through necessity, it’s through choice.
BT has redeployed thousands of people over many years. The process has worked for thousands and would work now if they allowed it to. Compare the approach taken with you, the KEY WORKERS, with the incompetence at the top of the company. No Team Member has a say in how the company reacts to change and no Team Member should pay the price for management’s incompetence, with their jobs. If you are affected by this, please call your local CWU branch as soon as possible.
We urge CWU members across the company to get involved with the union’s Count Me In campaign https://www.cwu.org/campaign/count-me-in/. We have already seen hundreds of jobs cut in Enterprise, many through compulsory redundancy. BT’s ironically titled Better Workplace Programme has not even ramped up yet.
This attack on a small number of Global workers must be resisted by us all because it’s not going to stop here, if we don’t.
Please ensure that your branch has your details up to date, so that we can contact you with anything that becomes urgent over the next weeks and months.