LTB 067/17 – Project Galaxy – Move of Work from BT Mobile to EE

No. 067/2017

2 February 2017

TO ALL BRANCHES WITH MEMBERS IN BT

Dear Colleague,

Project Galaxy – Move of Work from BT Mobile to EE

The BT Business and Public Sector Team were recently advised of Project Galaxy.

In summary this project has the following intention;

  • The move of BT Mobile work currently carried out in Warrington for BT Business and Public Sector (BPS), to the EE centres in Greenock and Darlington and the movement of those currently carryout the work to BT Consumer Help, in the same Warrington location.
  • The closure of the BT/EE Cross-Sell trial that was being held in Harton Quay in South Shields and the movement of the BT staff employed on this trial, to BT Consumer Help in Gosforth.
  • The movement of BT OnePhone work currently carried out in Warrington to the Mobile Team in Birmingham.
  • It is proposed that those transferring into BT Consumer Help would be graded TMSV2, which is an unagreed grade for this work.

The union has a number of serious concerns around this Project and believe that a number of agreements between the union and the company would be breached, if management implement their current proposal. The union asked management to delay the announcement while discussions took place with the aim being, to bring any changes into line with agreements between the company and the union. Management did not confirm that there would be a delay and therefore the union registered disagreement but management has refused to accept the disagreement or the status quo ante provision within that procedure. This has only served to compound the differences between us.

The current BT Mobile work in Warrington is carried out by B2s and C1s and in Harton Quay, by C1s and C2s. The people it is proposed to move this work to in EE, have a base pay of £16,102 pa. The Team believes that at best, this action circumvents the WF2020 agreement and at worse, is intended to do so.

Management’s rationale for their proposed actions is three-fold:

  1. To exploit the “scalability” which the acquisition of EE offers.
  2. That there is spare capacity in the EE Centres in Greenock and Darlington and the failure to move the BT Mobile work to these centres would put the EE staff at risk of redundancy.
  3. To help BT Consumer achieve its commitment to answer 90% of customer calls in the UK by April of this year.

Subsequent investigation by the union which management has now accepted, found that there is a current recruitment exercise taking place in Greenock and Darlington to deal with attrition rates at both sites. This renders the management’s assertion of spare capacity at these two sites as highly questionable.

The CWU’s listed points of disagreement cover a range of issues including;

  1. Moving higher graded work from BT to be carried out by lower graded/value roles in EE.
  2. The movement of work into an area where the CWU is not recognised.
  3. The current EE recruitment in Greenock in Scotland and Darlington does nothing to support the claim of spare capacity’ in these centres which is a main part of the rationale for these moves.
  4. Our opposition to the movement of work out of our recognised area into an area without CWU recognition.
  5. The proposal would breach BT’s own Resourcing Policies, the EDDI agreement and the Pay and Pension Protection agreement
  6. The proposal in its current form is a direct breach of the WF2020 Agreement by placing the existing team onto the TMSV2 grade.

While discussions are continuing with BT, they have advised the union that they intend to escalate the “alleged” breach of the WF2020 agreement and other associated issues, to BT Group and the union’s national WF2020 team.

The union has put a number of alternative proposals to management which in our view, meet their stated objectives. To date however, the position of the company has not moved.

The BPS Team remains hopeful that an agreement can be reached. At this stage however, it would be wrong to confuse that hope with optimism.

You will find attached the slides and Q&As that were used at the announcement of the project to our members.

Further reports will be provided to branches as discussions progress.

Yours sincerely

Allan Eldred

Assistant Secretary