CWU throws down gauntlet on BT Facilities outsourcing ‘endgame’

Telecoms & Financial Services, BT November 21 2018

Grassroots shock and anger at BT’s announcement that it intends to outsource its Facilities Services division exploded into outright defiance at an emergency National Briefing held at the TUC’s Congress House today (Wednesday) to finalise the union’s fightback plan.

With the scale of the threat posed to the Ts&Cs and job security of more than 1,700 CWU represented grades now clear for all to see, branches rallied behind a major new CWU campaign that will seek to expose the folly and recklessness of BT’s decision at every possible opportunity.

Just two days after BT dropped the devastating outsourcing bombshell on appalled employees across the country, the CWU’s new #ENDGAME campaign kicked off immediately the National Briefing came to a close – with attendees making their way en-masse to BT Tower to mount a noisy pop-up protest.

That rally, at one of BT’s highest profile central London locations, serves as a precursor of a myriad of follow-up protests across the country over the coming weeks. (See list below)

With its key message to BT to ‘Stop Playing Games’ with the livelihoods of loyal employees, the #ENDGAME campaign will highlight the inconsistency of a move  that flies in the face of BT’s 2012 decision in to bring the division back in-house after a previous decade-long earlier flirtation with outsourcing was judged to have comprehensively failed.

Anger and dismay is already rife amongst a workforce that now faces a re-run of its divestment in 2000 to a number of companies that ultimately became known as the Monteray Consortia – their foreboding fuelled by the grim experience of a decade of declining and increasingly anomaly-ridden Ts&Cs outside BT during the Monteray years.

Worryingly, the rationale given by BT for its plan to re-outsource Facilities Services to two companies – CBRE and ISS – from April 2019 is eerily reminiscent of the prevalent business mantra at the start of the Millennium when the division was first outsourced.

Attempting to justify last week’s announcement to the union, BT argued that Facilities Services is not a ‘core business’ – and

, as such, not part of its so-called ‘One BT’ plan. It went on to tell the union that BTPFS had not just failed in its initial objective to win other facilities services work outside of BT, but that BT Group is now convinced that ‘efficiency savings’ could be made by farming out the work, and those conducting it, to outside providers.

From the union’s perspective, the latter statement represents the clearest possible indication that the 1,700 CWU-represented grades earmarked for TUPE to CBRE and ISS are liable to be transferred into a cost-cutting agenda.

“We understand that the decision to outsource Facilities Services has been taken at Board level, and are deeply concerned that a dangerous precedent is in the process of being set,” stresses CWU deputy general secretary Andy Kerr.

“If things genuinely have gone full circle, and we’re witnessing a return to a business mantra where any functions that are not deemed to be ‘core’ are liable to outsourced, this would represent a profound and deeply unwelcome shift in Board-level thinking.

“Either way, the CWU will not sit back and watch our members’ jobs and livelihoods being sold off.”

 

  • A Facebook Live session will take place from 6.30pm to 7.30pm next Tuesday (November 27) at www.facebook.com/ThecommunicationsUnion/ at which Andy Kerr, national officer for BTFS, Sally Bridge and T&FS Executive member Tracey Fussey will be explaining the aims of the #ENDGAME campaign and answering your questions.

 

 

United in disgust…and determined to fight

News of the CWU’s highly developed fightback plan was greeted with enthusiasm and an impatience to get started by reps at today’s national briefing.

Following on from tomorrow’s BT Tower protest, further #ENDGAME campaign days will take place outside:

  • Doncaster call centre on November 22
  • Dial House in Salford on November 26
  • BT Sport on November 27
  • Cardinal Tower in Leicester on November 28
  • Riverside Tower in Belfast on November 30
  • BT’s Northallerton depot on December 3
  • Stadium House in Cardiff, also on December 3
  • The Sovereign Street offices in Leeds on December 4
  • North Star House in Swindon, also on December 4
  • Adastral Park on December 7.

The current round of protests will conclude on Monday December 10 at Alexander Bain House in Glasgow – but assistant secretary Sally Bridge stresses that will just be the start of a campaign which will also include:

  • A mass petition of not just BTPFS employees but also their CWU comrades in other parts of a BT Group
  • Direct lobbying of the BT Board by CWU members across the company
  • A concerted effort to seek coverage in both the local and national media.

“BT’s total lack of concern as to how those caught up in this outsourcing could be negatively affected by their transfer to ISS and CBRE represents a complete abrogation of the company’s responsibility to our members that will be fought every inch of the way,” concludes Sally.

“BT now has an important decision to make as to whether it really wants the reputational damage will flow from the very public betrayal of its Facilities Services workforce, or whether it is prepared to engage constructively with the CWU to address our concerns.”

 

  • A dedicated #ENDGAME campaign website has been set up at www.cwu.org/campaign/endgame/ providing a one stop shop for information about the battle that is getting underway – and easy access to campaign tools including an online petition and an emailing mechanism to send personal messages opposing the outsourcing to the BT Board.

https://www.facebook.com/ThecommunicationsUnion/videos/353676088529364/

https://www.facebook.com/ThecommunicationsUnion/videos/194232011511892/

https://www.facebook.com/ThecommunicationsUnion/videos/354472058646085/