• CWU end their dispute with BT
• Company commits to a pay increase for all staff in 2022
• Prospect seek overarching agreement to govern relationship with BT

Colleagues may have seen the message circulated by the BT Chief Executive, Philip Jansen, announcing that the company has now come to an agreement with the CWU. This follows a protracted dispute which saw the CWU threatening to take industrial action. Prospect is pleased that our colleagues in the CWU have been able to settle their differences with the company.

Details of the agreement were communicated earlier today alongside a commitment to increase pay for managers next year. This is something that Prospect have been pushing BT to announce over recent months. Indeed, the Prospect General Secretary made sure that this item was on the agenda when he recently met with Philip Jansen.

Prospect is also pleased to see that over the next twelve months redundancies will be avoided for team members who are in the company’s words “stranded” and unable to relocate, because of Better Workplace changes. From a Prospect perspective we have been able to avoid any compulsory redundancies under Better Workplace and have worked closely with the business to ensure that any forced relocations are avoided. We will continue this approach as the programme restarts. We will also continue to insist that where we believe a relocation to be unreasonable, for an individual member, an alternative solution is found.

The union understands that as part of the CWU’s agreement improvements to the new severance terms, negotiated by Prospect prior to their introduction in June, will now be implemented for team members. Prospect is pleased that team members will also now have a contractual entitlement to the enhanced terms. You will recall this vital safeguard was negotiated by Prospect and endorsed by our members in a ballot. Indeed, Prospect have chosen an approach on the above issues of sustained pressure and negotiation to deliver improvements for members.

Finally, Prospect has been negotiating for many months on an overarching agreement as to how we do business with BT in the future. Clearly, we want the business to be successful and we believe working in partnership with BT is critical to that success. However, we believe BT must turn statements they have made on Prospect as the collective voice of managers into flesh. We would like to see an agreement that allows us regular access to senior leaders in the business, not least the CEO, and an opportunity to help shape the future direction of the business. Furthermore, we believe a framework should be in place that recognises the role of the union and governs the relationship between BT and Prospect. We will report further on these negotiations over the coming weeks.                 

 

Please continue to follow us on Workplace at https://bt.workplace.com/groups/ProspectUnion/

and for members in Openreach, it is https://openreach.workplace.com/groups/1404567416378943/

Prospect represents over 151,000 working people across the UK. We focus on professionals, managers, technical experts and craftspeople working in a huge range of industries. To change your details, please call 0300 600 1878. If you have colleagues who are non-members, please encourage them to join Prospect too. People can join online at www.prospect.org.uk/joinus