48-hour strike action: Openreach repayment project engineers confirm it's on

Openreach repayment project engineers (RPE) are set to strike for 48 hours later this month in protest at parent company BT Group's overhaul of the grading structure, the Communication Workers Union has told members. The team of 170-strong techies was balloted last month by the union, and 120 of the 143 who turned out voted in …

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused

I thought Openreach was now a separate business, so what has BT got to do with anything? Or are they, as owner, not quite as "at a distance" as they are supposed to be?

[Down not across]

Smells like manure

In fact we've offered them all a better-paid, higher grade role within Openreach and we've given a cast-iron guarantee that they can stay on their existing terms and conditions – including an extremely competitive salary of around £45,000 a year – if they choose to.

If it is all so wonderful, why are peasants revolting? Clearly all is not quite as it made out to be.

Perhaps overtime (which tends to be required, but unpaid at management grades) , travel etc are conveniently not considered part of the aforementioned T&C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smells like manure

Perhaps it includes sacrificing their first born child.

Or perhaps you should desist from ignorant speculation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smells like manure

not only manure, it's the usual 'divide and conquer'

VERY cynical of them to assume this would blow over by giving the old-timers a bit of a bump in salary (at least on paper, as you're saying maybe not in practical terms), forgetting they're dealing with folks that are unionised to the hilt ... people who genuinely care about the next generation coming behind them - clearly.

Absolutely disgusting behaviour by BTOZ

Good on those RPE folk, we're all behind you

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smells like manure

forgetting they're dealing with folks that are unionised to the hilt ... people who genuinely care about the next generation coming behind them

Usual union BS. When I was in BT the unionized staff fell further & further behind as they refused to adapt to the changes in the modern telecoms world. Those of us who worked with management to improve our jobs always came out ahead in the long run.

Good on those RPE folk, we're all behind you

Speak for yourself.

[Jon 37]

Re: Smells like manure

They're cutting the pay for *new* employees in the department. Existing employees can choose to keep their existing pay.

My guess: In a few years, there will "sadly" have to be "unplanned" redundancies in that department, and it will be a complete coincidence that all the people on the old more-expensive pay package get made redundant; all the new cheap employees get kept.

[Azamino]

Re: Smells like manure

Just look at what happened at BA, where the staff were split between new and old contacts. The new contracts did not receive any of the expenses etc that the staff on the old contract were entitled to. Consequently BA management played one group off against the other and both groups ended up worse off.

Divide and conquer. Nothing new in this particular playbook.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

And to make things more exciting, somebody ought to do some impromptu trenching, severing a couple of critical links...

[TeeCee]

Counter-intuitive?

Only to those who buy into the union bollocks and actually believe that workers are underpaid.

In actual fact, the headline rates of pay mean nothing. With overtime, bonuses and such you quite often find skilled workers on hourly rates being paid rather more than their managers on salary. Both often work more than their contracted hours when the job demands, but managers don't get paid any more for doing it.

Back in the early eighties, driving a 3 ton delivery truck, I once took home more than double what the transport manager did, via the simple expedient of working every day in December for the Xmas rush.

[Coastal cutie]

I've worked in unionised and non-unionised workplaces in my career. Without exception, the unionised had better terms & conditions, better relations between staff and management (counter intuitive as that might seem) and better health & safety. At the moment this is aimed at new staff - if it follows the patterns I've seen elsewhere, give it 2 years and Openreach will be going after the existing employees' contracts as well. I wish them well.

[Lee D]

By contrast, I work in a highly-unionised industry and I refuse to sign up to them, mainly because to do so would jeopardise my privately-negotiated salary.

And, working in IT, running the finance system, and therefore party to a lot of HR/Finance data - at random, and inadvertently, only as problems arise - means that I know I'm not being conned or just being led into thinking that.

At a previous workplace, the top man literally had to scream and shout at a local government office because they - and I quote - "didn't have a payscale that went that high" when it came to that place employing me directly after having had them as a customer for 7 years when self-employed. They literally had to create a borough-wide payscale, with a unique code, just for me that hadn't existed before. They informally asked us to keep that quiet "because the unions would go mad".

Sorry, but unions often just reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. I'll negotiate my own salary, terms and conditions based on basic employment law, desirability of my services over alternatives, and what I need to be properly rewarded for the job. I've never been replaced by someone "doing the same job for less", but I have replaced several people by "doing the same job better, for more money".

Some of the people I work with will happily boast about their current level on the payscale (despite silencing conditions in their contracts) and I have to bite my lip knowing that - compared to private industry, literal identical workplaces, or even just equivalent work elsewhere - they are being conned into thinking it's a good salary because it's high up the payscale and higher than their colleagues who are a level below them and have no responsibilities at all.

Unionisation is just equalisation, for the most part. Fact is, some people are better at their jobs than others, hence more desirable, hence more retainable, and you shouldn't need to "promote" people by giving them unrelated or unsuitable responsibilities, while tearing them from the job they are far better at, in order to retain them anywhere near market rates.

[Azamino]

It's great to hear that you are so clearly on the best side of the bell curve in all aspects of your work Lee!

What would you suggest to someone nearer the middle, perhaps with a mortgage and a couple of kids? Because unionised industries do tend to pay better for the majority (not all) of the staff.

Thankfully I'm FIRE'd, though still working because I lack the imagination to do anything else during this pandemic, but not everyone is so fortunate.