BT workers announce first national strike in nearly four decades

Over 40,000 BT Group workers have announced a two-day national strike against real-terms pay cuts, as their union claim that “greedy bosses have stuck two fingers up” to key workers.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) which represents BT Group workers has served notice for strike action that will take place on Friday 29th July and Monday 1st August.

The announcement comes off a historic strike ballot, announced in late June, which saw 30,000 Openreach engineers voting for strike action by 95.8 per cent on a 74.8 per cent turnout. Workers in BT, approximately 9,000 of whom work in call centres, followed suite by voting to strike by 91.5 per cent on a 58.2 per cent turnout.

The dispute centres on workers opposing the imposition by company management of an incredibly low flat-rate pay rise. Earlier this year, BT offered and implemented a £1,500 per year pay increase for employees. In the context of RPI inflation levels already hitting 11.7 per cent this year, this is a dramatic real-terms pay cut.

It is also in the context of BT making £1.3bn in annual profit, with CEO Philip Jansen gaining a £3.5m pay package, a 32 per cent wage increase, while the Big Issue and the BBC have reported instances of BT Group offices establishing food banks to assist employees.

The strike action is also likely to have a serious effect on the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband, and may cause significant issues for those working from home. It is the first strike action at BT Group since 1987, and the first national call centre workers strike.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward said: “For the first time since 1987, strike action will now commence at BT Group. This is not a case of an employer refusing to meet a union’s demands, this is about an employer refusing to meet us whatsoever.”

“These are the same workers who kept the country connected during the pandemic. Without CWU members in BT Group, there would have been no home-working revolution, and vital technical infrastructure may have malfunctioned or been broken when our country most needed it.

“Our members worked under great difficulty, and got a real-terms pay cut as a reward. Meanwhile, Jansen gifted himself a £3.5m pay package, a 32 per cent pay increase. BT’s Chief Financial Officer was handed £2.2m, a 25 per cent increase. This isn’t including the £700m being paid out to shareholders.

“The reason for the strike is simple: workers will not accept a massive deterioration in their living standards. We won’t have bosses using Swiss banks while workers are using food banks. BT Group workers are saying: enough is enough. We are not going to stop until we win.”