The results of the CWU Consultative Ballot were announced today, 10th December 2020.
More than 74% of 45,000 BT members across all BT lines of business took part in the consultation.
Result – 97.9% – YES
“A HUGE THANK YOU TO OUR BRANCH BT MEMBERS WHO TOOK PART IN THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE and voted YES”
CWU: ‘Push us at your peril’, BT Group warned in 97.9% consultative ballot vote on industrial action.
Members across BT, Openreach and EE have delivered the starkest possible warning to management that, if necessary, they are prepared to take industrial action in defence of job security and hard won terms and conditions.
In what is undoubtedly the most important vote involving the CWU’s entire BT Group membership since the 1987 national strike, over 74% of the CWU members balloted across BT Group participated in the poll and of them 97.9% voted ‘YES’.
The consultative ballot, which closed at noon today (Thursday) after three weeks of voting, had been initiated to allow members to register their willingness to take industrial action ahead of a formal strike ballot.
If replicated in a statutory ballot, the overwhelming ‘YES’ vote they have delivered would comfortably pass the onerous legal thresholds that need to be met .
As such, CWU members have fired a very clear warning shot across BT’s bows that, unless bosses change direction on their vicious programme of compulsory redundancies, site closures and attacks on pay, terms and conditions, the company is on a direct collision course with its workforce.
Our members – many of them key workers – have made it crystal clear today that they will not support an agenda of compulsory redundancies, site closures and a ‘race to the bottom’ on terms and conditions.
Andy Kerr, CWU Deputy General Secretary (T&FS)