Support the more than 40,000 Communication Workers Union (CWU) members who work for the BT Group and will be striking on 29 July and 1 August. They are fighting against real-terms pay cuts. They are fighting for us all.
It is important that labour movement bodies send messages of solidarity and encourage activists to visit the picket lines. For details follow the CWU on Twitter here: @CWUnews.
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In the CWU strike ballot, 95.8 per cent of Openreach engineers 91.5% of CWU members in BT supported taking strike action.
The dispute centres on workers opposing the imposition by the business of a far-below-inflation, flat-rate, £1,500pa pay settlement on employees, which is a dramatic real-terms pay cut when compared to RPI inflation levels of over 11 per cent.
BT made £1.3 billion in annual profit last year and the CEO Philip Jansen is receiving a £3.5 million pay package – a 32 per cent increase on last year. Meanwhile the BBC has reported instances of BT offices establishing food banks to assist employees.
CWU general secretary Dave Ward said: “For the first time since 1987, strike action will now commence at BT Group. This is not a case of an employer refusing to meet a union’s demands – this is about an employer refusing to meet us whatsoever. The serious disruption this strike may cause is entirely down to Philip Jansen and his friends, who have chosen to stick two fingers up to their own workforce.
“These are the same workers who kept the country connected during the pandemic. Without CWU members in BT Group, there would have been no home-working revolution, and vital technical infrastructure may have malfunctioned or been broken when our country most needed it. Our members worked under great difficulty – and got a real-terms pay cut as a reward.