Greater London wing of comms union urges BT workers to reject pay offer The Greater London Combined Branch of the CWU, the communications union, is urging BT workers to vote against the pay deal ahead of the crucial ballot scheduled for 15 December. In a letter to members, the GLC claimed the current offer on the table is too low, and it "recommends that you vote to REJECT the latest BT pay offer …
Upvote, because in order to support their employees, the place I work is offering 2%.
That doesn't even match the difference in the price of cat food (and if you've been paying attention, those 100g pouches are now 85g, so you're paying about 15% more for 15% less).
"...it paid CEO Philip Jansen a 30-plus percent pay rise to £3.46 million."
And this here is the issue. In bad times particularly, the percentge payrise should match across the board and even then the CEO will have more actual money out of it due to a much higher salary. As my father used to put it "Pigs at the trough"
This is the biggest issue - people (and especially when it comes to discussing wage increases) always descend to talking in percentages.
Even if everyone right through the chain from workers at the bottom right up to the CEO are given the same percentage, the higher up the salary ladder one is, the more disproportionate the increase becomes, with those at the very top often getting an actual £ increase that is more then the total annual salary for the ones at the bottom. As long as people continue to negotiate in %, the gap between pay at the shop floor level compared with management will continue to widen, and as inflation/currency devaluation tends to run roughly parallel with average take-home pay, those at the bottom will steadily become poorer. What is needed is to get back to wage demands being set in currency terms at the outset.
Mind you, it is rather moot, because I am beginning to form a distinct feeling that the current inflation situation and the resulting financial difficulties being experienced by those at the bottom of the ladder is being used an excuse by left leaning union leaders for encouraging strike action and major disruption as a means of bringing down the Government, and any 'benefit' for their members is secondary. I use the inverted commas because nobody actually gains from strikes - unless those on strike actually win massive concessions (which they rarely if ever do), the strikers will never ever gain back the wages they lose by striking.
Absolutely. 10% on a crap salary is still crap, and below cost of living rise. 5% on a professional private sector salary is often a hell of a lot better in terms of cash.
Regarding strikers not winning, that's rubbish. A cursory look at the success stories reported on multiple trade union pages says otherwise. In my own workplace the unions have significantly improved the outcomes of pay deals for at least the last 10 years. So much so, folks on management contracts (execs notwithstanding) are falling behind staff... This is itself a problem, but what are manglement contractors going to do? Form a union too?!! [I jest, but it has been mooted].
There are bigger problems besides raw pay, the most obvious of which are staff retention, development and recruitment. There isn't an org in the land recruiting at anywhere near adequate rates to future-proof; and least of all the NHS.
Naively I had hoped that the refusal might also have been tied into how the CWU's Union colleagues in Prospect (BT managers in this case) were being completely stitched up by the part of the deal, that not only excludes those earning £50k or more from any rise at all, but delaying next year's pay rise too, effectively meaning that the £50k and above earners are paying for the deal.
This on top of the fact that BT have also stated that when next year's pay deal does finally happen, it'll take into account the amount already paid out to everyone earning £50k or less.
And Prospect are recommending we accept this? Having thrown half their BT membership under a bus to once again close a pay gap and punish those that have risen up career ladders and taken on more responsibility. So much for a Union being for the good of all.
Either we're in this together or we're not. Someone earning £50k and supporting a family is not rolling in cash. Vote No for this reason also.
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