Belated pay rise for Capita O2 and Tesco Mobile members

Telecoms & Financial Services, Capita September 3 2020

Thursday 3rd September 2020

Members across the Capita O2 and Tesco Mobile partnerships have voted decisively in favour of a CWU-brokered pay rise that delivers a minimum increases of 2% over 15 months for the vast majority.

In separate consultative ballots, which both closed this morning (Thursday), 87% per cent of O2 contract members and 91% of Tesco Mobile contract members casting their votes accepted the CWU-brokered deal, which ends nine months of uncertainty over a rise that technically became due on January 1.

The overall settlement for 2020 – which includes the earlier implementation of the Real Living Wage for Capital’s lower-paid workers that has seen some receive increases of up to 5.33% – will now be paid in September pay packets.

The long overdue deal was finally achieved following determined CWU lobbing of senior management to end months of stonewalling by company negotiators who repeatedly cancelled and deferred meetings in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic citing the need for direction from above.

                               Brendan O’Brien

Despite the union being unsuccessful in its attempts to get Capita to budge on a £28,000 upper pay cap, the company’s ‘final offer’ was recommended to members last month  on the basis of management’s  promise to hold a special review for those affected later in the year.

Thanking members for supporting the union’s recommendation, CWU assistant secretary Brendan O’Brien stressed he was “absolutely convinced that the settlement for 2020 was the best that could have been achieved by negotiation.

“This has been a very long and drawn-out process, but clearly members have taken on board the fact that this year’s pay talks were held in the most unusual circumstances and involved a great number of facets,” he continued.

Insisting that important lessons had been learned in the first detailed pay talks with Capita to have covered the entire membership of both bargaining units – rather than just the TUPE population – Brendan concluded: “We now have a far better understanding of the level of interference in pay talks that takes place from the centre, and an appreciation of those influences will be helpful in future pay negotiations.”