Fight for jobs at BT Global!

Submitted by Anon on 7 April, 2007 - 10:53

By Maria Exall, CWU executive

THE CWU Telecoms Executive has made an agreement with BT Global, the division of BT that deals with contracts for businesses, that means In the future BT will be able to outsource UK work to India with the acquiescence of the union. It is recommending members vote yes to this agreement.

The agreement that has been done at national level is currently out to a ballot of 6,000 BT Global CWU members. Several branches are opposing the deal though the Executive has done the hard sell, not backed however by hard evidence. Many of the meetings with members to tell them that a good deal was on the cards took place before the deal was in the public arena so members could check fact from assertion.

The larger Engineering branches opposing the deal, such as Central London, North West London and Manchester Combined, are not only opposing but organising against. The Communication Workers Broad Left is campaigning against the deal, despite the Executive being dominated by BL members.

BT staff already have voluntary redundancy agreements and pay and pension protection. This agreement does not give any extra rights to current or future members. It just gives the green light to offshoring. The agreement appears to commit to a framework for future resourcing agreements but there is no commitment to jobs, or the grades of those jobs. Whilst the negotiations have been going on management have been outsourcing already, in advance of any agreement. Their attitude to the union is contemptuous.

BT Global is a BT division where there is growth area. If union agrees to offshoring here, there is no argument against any jobs going abroad. BT Wholesale, where changes in network technology will almost inevitably lead to job cuts, is set to be the next division which comes to an offshoring agreement.

The only answer to the attack from offshoring is to fight for every job. Whilst on one level it is true, in many circumstances we may not be able to always stop employers exploiting cheap labour abroad. But union organisation is the only source of resistance.

The union’s Executive has bought in to management’s logic that for BT Global to be competitive in the UK marketplace it has to outsource. The argument goes this way: by allowing a proportion of work to be outsourced Global will be able to bid at a cheaper rate which means BT Global will win more contracts, make more profits and be a successful company, and then CWU members who work for BT Global will have job security in a fast moving industry. It is understandable that corporate capitalists should believe this, with a warm glow inside because of the apparent win- win scenario, but why would trade unionists fall for such an argument? This is company unionism in all its crassness.

If we take the company arguments on face value (and set aside any doubts that perhaps they are pursuing this strategy to just cut jobs and undermine the union in this area) the flaws are major. It is the case that challenging for contracts is competitive, but this is something BT collude in, not something that is forced on them. It was the Government (of all people) who insisted that the N3 project (IT in the NHS) should not include work outsourced to India because of the political outcry that would result, Even Essex County Council, Tory run, insisted that BT, who ran their IT contract, should keep work local. With a Union agreement to outsource we are unable to use political pressure such as this to resist offshoring.

It is BT along with other telecoms providers who want to use outsourced labour because it is more profitable. The idea that we are on the same side as BT against a common enemy is false. The reality is that those who run the corporations who compete for the contracts, those who set the rules and regulations for economic competition, and those who award the contracts are all part of the same world of profit and exploitation.

Which brings us on to the big whopping lie at the centre of the case for this company unionism — that increased profitability will mean job security for workers. This view does not fit with anything that has happened in the telecom industry over the past few decades. This is an industry which is the most profitable that economic history has seen, yet it is also an industry where jobs are cut on a massive scale. Since the privatisation of BT and the liberalisation of the telecoms market, BT has shed over 100,000 jobs.

Though some of this is due to developments in technology, a greater percentage is due to pressure from management on productivity. Despite the demand for telecoms services massively increasing, there is massive casualisation and low pay in parts of the industry and better paid employees in all companies face increased stress from performance targets.

We can take the latest threat to our job and terms and conditions as yet another attack we live through, or we can make our own job security by fighting back. The only way we as working people can get something from capitalist class is by organising against them.

A political fight is necessary, as well as an industrial response. This needs to include workers in India who are subcontracted to BT. We need to build up global union organisation so we can fight cheap labour world wide.

Fight back against cheap labour, fight for every job! Vote No!

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