BT and Openreach workers in Northern Ireland strike over pay

BT and Openreach workers across Northern Ireland have staged a strike in a dispute over pay.

Members of the Communications Workers Union voted to protest against a £1500 pay rise.

Another strike is planned for Monday (1 August).

30,000 Openreach engineers voted for strike action by 95.8% on a 74.8% turnout.

Workers in BT followed suite by voting to strike by 91.5% on a 58.2% turnout.

Commenting on Friday’s (29 July) strikes, a CWU spokesperson said: “Today’s strike has been nothing short of rock solid.

“In every town and city, BT Group employees manned over 400 picket lines, showing their opposition to a management that doesn’t seem to care about them.

“Today’s strike should be a wake-up call to Philip Jansen and BT Group that workers in this country will not sit idly by and watch their living standards crumble.

“The public is fed up at the level of corporate greed in this country today, and our members will be out again on Monday to tell BT Group that enough is enough.”

A BT Group spokesperson said: "At the start of this year, we were in exhaustive discussions with the CWU that lasted for two months, trying hard to reach an agreement on pay.

"When it became clear that we were not going to reach an accord, we took the decision to go ahead with awarding our team member and frontline colleagues the highest pay award in more than 20 years, effective April 1.

"We have confirmed to the CWU that we won't be reopening the 2022 pay review, having already made the best award we could.

"We're balancing the complex and competing demands of our stakeholders and that includes making once-in-a-generation investments to upgrade the country's broadband and mobile networks, vital for the UK economy and for BT Group's future - including our people.

"While we respect the choice of our colleagues who are CWU members to strike, we will work to minimise any disruption and keep our customers and the country connected.

"We have tried and tested processes for large-scale colleague absences to minimise any disruption for our customers and these were proved during the pandemic."

BT revealed its first sales growth for five years on Thursday as the telecoms giant benefited from price increases for customers earlier this year.

The group said it was also boosted by more people signing up for fibre-optic broadband and strong trading in its Openreach network business.

BT told shareholders that revenues increased by 1% to £5.1 billion for the three months to June 30.