Major survey launched on BT Consumer attendance patterns

Telecoms & Financial Services, BT

Members across BT Consumer are being urged to participate in an important new survey which signals that real progress is being been made in negotiations designed to secure meaningful improvements to the attendance patterns on offer to customer facing staff.

The information gathering exercise, which was formally launched this morning (Friday), is designed to inform ongoing negotiations in which the union is seeking to enhance the predictability of the attendance patterns on offer and to secure the provision of consecutive days off wherever possible.

Those talks, which are also intended to facilitate the introduction of team-based scheduling, represent the latest plank of the CWU’s long-running efforts to secure the improvements to attendance patterns that were originally promised by the 2015 Transformation Agreement, but which have so far proved elusive.

New impetus was given to the discussions by CWU Annual Conference in May when frustrated delegates voted unanimously in support of a T&FS Executive motion which warned that time was fast running out for the company to come up positive proposals for more predictable and less ant-social shift patterns. That company pledge had always been the flip-side of uncomfortable changes accepted by the union to help the company refocus its call centre activities using UK direct labour.

Assistant secretary Nigel Cotgrove said: “In the months that have followed the talks have made good progress – and, as part of our negotiations, BT has agreed to run an attendance pattern survey with the full support of the CWU.

“We’d like as many of our members to take part as possible – including those who have Exceptional Change of Hours (ECOH) or formal flexible working arrangements in place – because we want to sense check where we’ve got in our discussions and ensure that the example attendance patterns are in line with what people would actually want.

“This is a great opportunity for members to influence the way our talks with the company progress. As such we’ve ensured that the survey not only asks questions but also allows advisors the opportunity to comment directly on the issues that most affect them.”

The survey runs from today (September 13) to September 27, and the results will feed into the negotiations.

Nigel stresses the survey is anonymous, not binding on advisers and will not change any existing patterns. It will be team-briefed on all sites in the next few days, and the union has been assured that advisors will be able to complete the survey in work time.

He concludes: “Hopefully the results of the survey will help us secure a new national agreement on attendances – and members can rest assured that, if we reach the point where the national union is able to recommend agreement, we’ll be consulting all CWU members in Consumer before any changes are implemented.”