Assurances sought for BT’s outsourced legal team
BT December 9 2019Categorical answers regarding job security and work location are being sought for 28 members of BT’s recently outsourced Legal Team.
Despite the union’s success in securing both recognition and job security agreements for the Sheffield-based transferees following their TUPE to DWF Law LLP on November 1, uncertainty still exists as where their work will be located once they are forced to quit BT’s Eldon House site in May 2020.
“Although BT has agreed that DWF can remain in Eldon House until then, it is still unclear as to what exactly happens after that, and this is understandably causing significant anxiety for the members concerned,” explains CWU assistant secretary Dave Jukes.
“The trouble is that DWF’s main office is in Manchester, with a secondary site in Leeds – and neither are in what the CWU would class as reasonable travelling time from Sheffield. It was for precisely this reason, able everything else, that it was so important we secured a recognition agreement with DWF that makes direct reference to the redundancy agreement that forms part of the pension deal we brokered with BT in 2018.”
That agreement, which gives the CWU full collective bargaining rights for the members affected, was signed on November 28 – alongside a separate agreement which sets out important key principles on job security.
While TUPE law provides scant protection for staff where an ‘economic, technical or organisational’ reason is flagged up that questions job security pre-transfer, no such ‘measures’ were announced by DWF prior to the TUPE – and the CWU is optimistic that the company’s willingness to subsequently to sign up to both the recognition and job security agreements bodes well for the future.
“Certainly we’ve lined up all the protections we could possibly set in place, knowing that the legal team will have to vacate Eldon House in May – and the hope is that the move, when it comes , will be to a new office that is within reasonable travelling time of the present one,” stresses Dave.
“Conscious of the fact that the clock is ticking, however the CWU is keen to secure categorical answers as soon as possible with regards to where exactly that office will be – and we’ve lodged a request for a meeting with the company early in the New Year with precisely that in mind.”
The CWU members in question administer a wide range of legal work for BT, including processing claims arising from accidents involving BT vehicles.