The union, together with the CWU, recently and very reluctantly reached a new agreement with BT on homeworking. You can get the details of this agreement and why it was made by clicking on the right hand side of this page.

You will also find the short on-line survey on the right hand side of this page.

The main points of the agreement are

1. There will be no change to the terms and conditions of formal homeworkers (defined as those who work at home at least 60% of the time)

2. The previous category of 'Occasional' homeworker will be abolished and those previously designated as occasional homeworkers, or who do not meet the above criteria of formal homeworker will become either Agile of Mobile office workers. They will lose the heating allowance (£104 pa) and will become headquartered at a BT building, and T and S arrangements will apply to them as though they were based at this venue

We made the agreement in order to protect the contractual position of existing and future formal homeworkers. Had we not done so, they would have lost the contractual protection that comes with a formal collective agreement between BT and the unions, and could become vulnerable to further unilateral changes.

Members have informed us of widespread breaches of the agreement. In particular, it is apparent that in some parts of BT, there is a policy of denying anyone the ability to become full, formal homeworkers, even where the individual was and still is working at home more than 60% of the time. It is clear for instance that at least one Line of Business has been following a policy of refusing to give full contractual homeworker status to its homeworkers for the last few years, insisting on Occasional status instead. This used not to make any practical difference but now it does.

Employees working more than 60% of their contractual hours at home should request formal homeworker status via their line manager and inform Prospect if this is denied, advising us about the reasons given.

We now need to understand better what is happening, Line of Business by Line of Business. It would be very helpful if you could complete this short and anonymous on line survey.