‘Viper’ staff can bite back, CWU warns

Telecoms & Financial Services May 21 2019

Anger at the treatment of ex-Computacenter staff, who’ve now been denied three years worth of consolidated pay rises because of a grading row that erupted after they were TUPE’d into BT Business & Public Sector in 2016, boiled over at CWU Annual Conference earlier this month.

Delegates unanimously backed an emergency motion committing the Telecoms & Financial Services Executive to ballot the relevant members for industrial action unless a satisfactory resolution to an “unreasonable and unjustified attack on our members’ pay” is reached by July 1.

The absurdity of the situation facing those affected was placed in stark relief by Ian Lawrie of Scotland No.1 who explained how a widely welcomed TUPE back into “BT proper” from the now defunct ITS division under so-called ’Project Viper’ had turned into a nightmare on account of an inexplicable decision to apply ITS’s ‘Hendrix’ grading scale to the ex-Computacenter members who’d always been specifically ring-fenced from it during their short time in ITS.

At a stroke, the decision meant that NewGRID-aligned Ts&Cs and pay rates which had survived intact for the group’s 13 years at Computacenter, and one further year in the ITS subsidiary, were suddenly removed – ironically at the very moment of their full return to the BT fold.

“In June 2016 the Viper engineers received a 2.5 per cent pay rise, backdated to the previous April, but in 2017 the problems started,” explained Ian.

“The land of milk and honey turned into the land of crumbs and water. Some people were offered a very small rise, but the majority received no rise at all. When we asked ‘why’ we were told it was because we were already on the maximum pay for our grades, because somehow we’d ended up in the Hendrix grading system, though nobody can tells us when or why we arrived there.”

Liam Alderson of East Midlands Branch continued: “When they arrived back in BT proper in 2016 they were grateful they were back to where they originally chose to work and assumed life would improve…but their pay is now more than 12 per cent less than their former C3 and D1 colleagues.”

Neil Cothall of Great Western branded it “unacceptable that such an unethical act should be imposed on a group of our members,” and Pete Francis of South East Central stressed that members who now feel like “the forgotten workforce…need our support because they’ve been badly let down.”

Unequivocally pledging that full support, assistant secretary Allan Eldred admitted: “I understand their anger because I’m bloody angry too!

“As every speaker has pointed out, they shouldn’t even be in the Hendrix system. They left BT and went into Computacenter with NewGRID – Computacenter didn’t change it – and they came into ITS with NewGRID. ITS didn’t change their grading – in fact they wrote a  document specifically excluding them from Hendrix – yet at the very point of them re-entering BT, someone decided to put them into that grading system.

“Who that person was I don’t know – and I don’t know because they’re all blaming each other for it!”

Stressing the seriousness of the situation that is now unfolding, Allan pointed out that a problem that was once specific to just 37 of the so called ‘Viper’ engineers is set to mushroom. That’s because,  although the other former ITS grade employees who are still below the Hendrix max received a 3 per cent consolidated increase this year, the Hendrix pay rates themselves have not been upwardly adjusted.

“That means they are all going to the max point at some stage,” warned Allan…pointing out that, unless a comprehensive solution can be reached, the demand for an industrial action ballot could potentially include the whole BT Business field force.