Union meeting BT shareholders today to discuss strikes, pay rises

The union behind the protracted strike action at BT is today scheduled to meet with the British telecoms giant's shareholders – one of the screws it is turning to press for pay talks to be reopened. Thousands of BT Group engineers and call center workers are also downing tools again today in protest of the £1,500 pay award …

[Headley_Grange]

Pointless?

Most shareholders don't give a toss about the company and what it does. All they do is look at the ratios and decide whether to buy, hold or sell. By now the savvy ones will have factored in the potential of strikes and pay rises. Even worse are the parasites with shorted positions hoping for more strikes so the share price drops.

[CountCadaver]

No sympathy for either side

None for manglement particularly at Openretch who have designed the most convoluted system possible to thwart customers actually speaking to someone

None for the "engineers" who nearly all still seem to think its the winter of discontent, that they still work for the GPO and they can do as little as possible as poorly as possible, while maintaining the most surly attitude possible and trying everything to avoid actually having to *fix* the problem.

Pox on them all, should have been shut down decades ago and broken up, maybe by now we'd have serious nationwide competition, instead of a BT Openretch monopoly in most of the country

</grumble>

[JT_3K]

Re: No sympathy for either side

Not that I disagree. In a previous role being responsible for connectivity between around 700 sites in the UK damn near killed me and I'm sure we all have tales of physically needing to be halfway across the country, sat by the one ingress road to a property to be sure that the engineer can't "fail to find a contact" at a retail site with a 20-foot wide illuminated sign visible from the approaching a-road and 14hr/day manned reception.

Be careful what you wish for however in break-up as, having to run the gauntlet of Kingston Communications several times, somehow they've managed to "improve" on the ineptitude.

My primary takeaway from this mess is noting that BT Manglement is already citing delays to fibre roll outs. Ergo, I expect soon that the few days strike action is costing them in October and whatever that has been before will ultimately be blamed for a hugely disproportionate loss of ground in their current obligations. "Your fibre was due in Q4 2022, but due to strike action, your new presentation date is Q3 2026. The end of the UK-wide FTTP rollout has been subsequently and unavoidably moved from 2027 to 2037. We apologise (whatever that means, certainly not in a legally binding sense) for any inconvenience caused."

[Arthur the cat]

Re: No sympathy for either side

None for the "engineers" who nearly all still seem to think its the winter of discontent, that they still work for the GPO and they can do as little as possible as poorly as possible, while maintaining the most surly attitude possible and trying everything to avoid actually having to *fix* the problem.

I haven't had many contacts with BT engineers, but when I have they've been incredibly helpful, including one who phoned up (via my mobile as the landline was out) to say "I'm down to visit you in 2 days time, but I'm only half a mile away and ahead of schedule so can I come and deal with your problem now?" and promptly did so.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: No sympathy for either side

Beat me to it. Since spring I've had 4 visits to sort out my dodgy line and all the people who turned up were great. Happy to spend time, great comms - they called before disconnecting me and they all gave me their mobile and said to get back in touch if it wasn't fixed. They fixed the fault eventually (about 6 intermittents in the line between me and the cab).

The process to get a call out was similarly OK - between the SMS thing and the help staff somewhere in Ireland even a curmudgeonly old git couldn't find anything to complain about.

[Martin-73]

Re: No sympathy for either side

Same, I suspect OP had a one off bad experience (and they can happen), and generalized

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No sympathy for either side

It's good to feel appreciated by customers. Shame the company doesn't feel the same way. Morale is extremely low, and BT are going to lose a lot of their best engineers if this doesn't get sorted out soon.

Heartbreaking.

[Missing Semicolon]

Psychopathic

It takes a "special" kind of person to insist that there is no money for pay rises, after awarding themselves a 30% pay rise in the face of declining profits.

[Kane]

Re: Psychopathic

"It takes a "special" kind of person to insist that there is no money for pay rises, after awarding themselves a 30% pay rise in the face of declining profits."

Yeah, they're called CEOs