News

Telecoms giant BT is to shed up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade, mostly in the UK, as it cuts costs.

Up to a fifth of those cuts will come in customer services as staff are replaced by technologies including artificial intelligence.

Close tabs are being kept on the latest changes that have been unveiled by Supply Chain bosses, with the CWU intent on ensuring that every effort will be made to mitigate against potential redundancies.

BT Group’s decision to extend its outsourced facility services contract with CBRE has been warmly welcomed by the CWU as good news for more than a thousand housekeepers, security guards, grounds maintenance staff and post room employees across the BT estate.

Major concerns have been expressed by the CWU over Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) shock announcement that more than 200 former BT Sport employees are being placed at risk of redundancy.

Members across BT, Openreach and EE have voted by four-to-one to accept a further £1,500 flat rate pay rise (pro-rata for part-timers) that will be paid monthly from January 1, 2023.

The fully consolidated and pensionable settlement, which ends six months of industrial unrest in BT Group, comes on top of the £1,500 flat-rate increase that was unilaterally imposed by BT in April this year.

Members across the whole of BT Group are strongly advised to accept management’s ‘final’ offer to end six months of industrial strife.

The deal on the table – which is now subject to a consultative ballot that gets underway today (Tuesday) – sees all CWU-represented grade employees in BT, Openreach and EE receive a further £1,500 fully consolidated pay increase from January 1, 2023.

BT MUST share its “pot of cash with struggling workers,” their union demanded today, after bosses threatened job cuts and price hikes.

The privatised firm warned it would leave “no stone unturned” to find an extra £500 million it claimed was needed amid soaring inflation and energy costs.

Up to 38,000 workers at UK broadband and telecoms giant BT (including Openreach) have today begun the final day of their latest round of strikes over a pay dispute (the 8th day overall). But the Communications Workers Union (CWU) claims that BT’s CEO, Philip Jansen, still “won’t even negotiate” with them.

A selection of photographs from our Strike Days 7&8, at Hastings, Brighton & Tunbridge Wells. Well done all who went on strike and especially those who attended the picket lines.

Another rock-solid display of workforce fury at the real-term pay cuts that have triggered the first national strike in BT Group for 35 years has drawn mass media attention to the bizarre missing presence of the company’s CEO in a dispute that has now spread to the UK’s emergency services infrastructure.

On Monday 10th October the sixth day of strikes the pickets were held at Hove TEC, Brighton Withdean ATE, Hastings TEC, Tunbridge Wells ATE & Tunbridge Wells TEC