Ready to fight on multiple fronts!

Telecoms & Financial Services April 25 2017

Challenges abound on multiple fronts – meaning it’s incumbent on the CWU to seize the initiative and take the lead in shaping the future. That was the key message from CWU deputy general secretary Andy Kerras he opened the CWU’s Telecoms & Financial Services Conference in Bournemouth today.

Rather than simply responding to threats posed by employers’ agendas, Andy insisted it was vital that the CWU takes the lead by adopting a more proactive agenda in defence of members’ interests.

In wide-ranging speech covering developments in many of the companies in which the CWU has members, the DGS (T&FS) highlighted the particular threats posed by Brexit, the forthcoming General Election and the growing body of evidence that technological developments mean we are on the cusp of a fourth industrial revolution’ which will inevitably have a profound impact across the world of work.

In the more immediate future, developments within the Telecoms sector that are continuing to generate uncertainty and concern include the final outcome of Ofcom’s strategic digital review – and the as-yet unfinalised details of the looming legal separation’ of Openreach from BT.

Also looming large are concerns over a potential O2 sell off by Telefonica and the growing tendency of companies to attack pension schemes in response to rising deficits and an increasingly prevalent corporate view that pension liabilities need to be dramatically reined in.

Yet despite all the challenges, Andy insisted that resolute responses by the CWU – of the kind recently mounted at iPSL in Bootle, where the company has just backed off from making three compulsory redundancies in the wake of a united response from the local workforce – showed that solidarity still means strength in the 21st Century.

Setting out some of the key strands of the proactive agenda confront head on various challenges that Conference will be discussing this week, Andy highlighted a range of the union’s aims that will be debated over the coming days. These include:

  • Ensuring that Manpower employees in BT are paid a minimum of the Real Living Wage
  • Ensuring job security in O2, no matter the outcome of its sell-off
  • Increased pay progression and better attendance patters for members working in contact centres in Santander
  • Stopping third party working in BT consumer, increasing direct labour and improving attendance patterns
  • Addressing disparities between those on Workforce 2020 NewGRID contracts and other NewGRID grades
  • Ensuring the BT Pension Scheme remains open for future accrual whilst securing improvements to the BT Retirement Savings Scheme.

On BT pensions, Andy highlighted Motion 62, which will be debated later this week, which will commit the union to oppose by all means necessary, including industrial action, any attempts by BT to close the BTPS to future service accrual.

“There’s no ifs’ and no buts’ – Andy stressed: “If that happens industrial action will be inevitable.”