BT performs U-turn, agrees to up wages for 85% of UK staff BT has offered the majority of its workforce a "Cost of Living Pay Rise" in the hope it settles long-running industrial action that saw thousands of engineers and call center personnel repeatedly down tools in recent months. Under the terms of the offer, Britain's largest telecom operator said it will offer a £1,500 pay rise …
"your fight was successful."
No it wasn't, BT have just been creative to make them think they have won when all they have got it what is what BT was going to give them anyway. You can't add the £1500 from this year to the £1500 for next year and say that it is a 15% rise as they are two different years. All BT have done is give them a £1500 pay rise dated from Aprile 2022 which is a 7.5% pay raise for the lower earners.
Under the terms of the offer, Britain's largest telecom operator said it will offer a £1,500 pay rise for all UK staff presently earning £50,000 or less from the start of 2023. This is a consolidated salary increase, not a one-off pay award.
Some 85 percent of UK staff will be in line to receive the increase, the company said.
What's surprising to me is that 15% of BT employees appear to be earning north of £50k. That corresponds to 15,000 people, assuming the staff count on their Wikipedia page is correct. Sounds like a very top-heavy organisation to me, packed to the rafters with layer upon layer of useless middle management.
I think you need to get into another industry if you think £50k is doing well in tech.
A project manager lower end £90k up to £140k. A very good sysadmin with 10-15 years experience in a good job should be able to look at £90k or more. An IT manager in financial companies should be looking at £120k or more, a dept head £150k and a global head up around £180k.
I think you're in cuckoo land.
Those are not common salaries. I have 20 years experience, some of that as a CTO...most places would laugh at me if I asked for £90k...I'd have to pick a role at a very, very large very, very niche company to expect that sort of salary as a starting point and I'd have to have a very niche understanding of these very, very large, very, very niche businesses.
Also, the overwhelming majority of "Project Managers" earn peanuts. Sure a few of them do well, but most of them don't...a lot of them don't work for half the year either...so the £90k to £140k pro-rata'd ends up being £30k-£50k in reality.
At Google, 75% of their project managers earn less than £75k and the starting salary is £22k. The upper end is £111k. Other large players are largely the same, if not lower.
If you stray outside of the massive tech firms, the salaries drop off a cliff.
What is not reported here is that this is paid for by delaying the usual June pay review for ALL management grades (and that's a legacy title and includes the majority of devs, testers, sys admin etc - not just rich middle managers creaming off cash for doing nothing!) until September. That will likely save enough to pay for this... but ON TOP of that too, this £1500 pay increase will be taken into consideration during that pay review. So in reality, this is likely just an advance on what might have been awarded in June, paid for by pushing that back to September.
BT wins, and the Unions crawl back into their cave while claiming to have achieved something for only some their members. Approx 50% of managers, represented by Prospect, will benefit. BT has therefore also managed to drive a wedge through the Union membership, and that is resulting in LOTS of members leaving as they feel let down!
This is a really crap deal for the workers. Read the replies to the CWU's tweet. Between inflation & the most they lost striking, they only just break even. All this does is bring next year's pay increase 3 months early and agree to defer the next negotiations until September next year
I stood on a picket with a CWU placard saying "10% nothing less." They promised any deal would be backdated. Bills are rising by a percentage, not a flat rate. If this is the best they could do, why did the CEO get 32%, plus a handy windfall when his actions tanked the share price of about £1.5 mill? Union sold BT and Openreach this " deal" hiding the fact thos was not a resolution of 2022s pay deal, but 2023s deal brought forward a few months. Many decent engineers have already left for the Altnets for about a 25% payrise, but less job security. Always felt the job security, other benefits (I start and finish late to do the school run, above average holiday entitlement....) and job satisfaction was a decent trade off, not so sure now
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