Why BT and Openreach staff are striking. What you won't see in the MSM.

I would like to share the reasons why BT and Openreach staff have voted overwhelming for strike action for tomorrow and monday.

Firstly I like to show the numbers. They don't lie and paint a powerful picture.

BT profits £1.3billion Shareholder dividend £750million One share holder alone received £135million, almost double the figure spent on staff pay rises. Staff payrises £85million

BTs CEO Phillip Janson remuneration package was a staggering £3.5 million, an increase of 32% of the previous year and 86 times the average employee salary.

So when anyone tells you BT can't afford a payrise you know it's not true. If the shareholders got 50% of the profits and we had that extra 8% that would give us more than enough for a an inflation matching payrise.

Openreach and BT tell it's engineers to leave things as good or ideally better than how they found them. Be that in a customer premises our out in our network, we aim to make things better. But BT and Openreach seem to be doing the opposite?

1. Increasing the working week from 36 to 37.5 hours.
2. Reducing base salary's and implementing bonus schemes designed only to save on pension and overtime.
3. Reducing overtime rates
4. Reducing sick pay
5. Reducing pensions
6. Reducing redundancy
7. Levelling down the pay for highly skilled jobs. 1 year ago the highest engineer grade was D1 £46,000 basic, now the highest engineering grade is TMNE4 £36,000 basic. A £10,000 drop! And something which not many seems to know about!

I want to make the workplace a better place than when I found it. When my children join the workforce I don't want him to have to work a 40 hour week for less money than the generation before them.

This race to the bottom needs to stop!

BT and Openreach will have saved millions/billions with the contact changes above. So they can more than afford a decent and FAIR payrise.

Everyone is free to do as they wish with striking. But please don't believe that this is the end of it. If we don't stand up now it will only get worse.

We will have more paycuts imposed on us without the unions say. And in 5-10 years time when 90%+ are on a TMNE contracts our 10% bonus will be taken away or made performance related meaning you can no longer rely on it.

We need to make a stand and stop the downward spiral of pay and conditions.

So if you see us on the picket line over the next few days, give us a show of support. Thank you!

submitted by /u/dizzy078
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