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The Most Unique Strike In History

THE MOST UNIQUE STRIKE IN HISTORY? In December 2020, the GMB union balloted British Gas field engineers for the right to strike against the Fire and Re Hire the Senior Management have been threatening us with since June2020. 89% of ballot returns voted in favour of industrial action. That is around 5,000 engineers. The company is leading people to believe that over 80% of its employees have already signed up to its new conditions so there is nothing wrong with them. The details they have not included is that the ones who have are Office staff and Contract employees on completely different contracts then the field staff. A good majority of these are receiving small improvements and only the long-term employees that are the minority are losing out. What makes this vote unique is that we are not asking for anything extra from the company. All we want is for them to remove S188 Fire and Re Hire and continue negotiations with the Union. The company have point blankly said they will not engage in any further talks and the clock is ticking until a legally approved final date is issued. So far it has been moved from January 2021 and we believe they will be issuing our new contract to sign on the 31st March2021 with two options. Sign the contract or leave the business. No redundancy as the role is and has been understaffed for years. A huge number of these engineers have only ever worked as an engineer for BG since leaving school and have always envisaged it to be a job for life. Two years ago, the company managed to get through a change to our Final salary pension seeing it cut in half moving forward. Yes, it was a good pension in today’s market, but this was one of the major factors in people staying with the company as it had already been removed to new entrants years ago. I believe they got the numbers required in the vote on this due to a £8k one of payment before tax and NI. Personally, it has reduced my pension by around £11k a year so not great. Unfortunately, many had already become disillusioned with the way the company was going and could not foresee staying until retirement. Senior Management must have seen this as a huge win and I believe this started the wheels in motion for what we are being faced with today, after working through the biggest pandemic in centuries, constantly entering and working in people’s houses and even ones who had tested positive. As a leaked clip recently shows a Senior manager is in tears early on in this pandemic because of what the company is asking us to do for its customers. This has been followed by another leaked clip of various senior managers gloating over the fact that the pandemic and recent events in America have managed to keep the strike almost completely out of the mainstream media. Just Before Christmas 2020 they constantly contacted us which some have seen as bullying and intimidation to pre sign a copy of intent to sign the contract in February. For this you got a sweetener or as they called it a transition payment of either £1k or £2k depending what part of field services you worked in. Also enhanced benefits of extra holiday that was being taken away under the new terms and enhanced bonus scheme that has not even been trailed yet to show if fit for purpose. Those receiving London Weighting or those set to lose it under the new agreement also got this for a few extra years, for some up to £5k. I will now try and summarise the changes I have managed to understand under the new contract for a service and repair engineer. I am still yet to find a single positive for the employee. 1. The average engineer will be losing 4 days annual leave and around 10 rest days. 2. Those who receive London weighting (up to £5.2k) will either loose it completely or see it dramatically reduced. 3. We have been told we earn above market average for our role so will receive no pay rise for a minimum of 3 years guaranteed and could be between 5-10 years without a rise. 4. Our 37-hour week will increase to 40 hours, you will not see an increase in your base pay for these hours so will be effectively taking a pay cut as your hourly rate will reduce. The companies new bonus scheme (CTAP) could if you exceed targets pay for these hours. 5. CTAP the new bonus scheme has not been trailed or tested to see if it is fit for purpose. 6. The sharesave scheme will no longer be available. 7. Being forced to pay for private health insurance otherwise you will only receive statutory sick pay. Also 6 months full and 6 months half pay will change to 3 months at 100% and 9 months at 66% 8. Core hours will change Currently Summer Monday to Friday from 8am to 7pm. Winter Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm. Saturday 8am to 6pm and Sunday 8am to 5pm. All days will be 7am to 9pm. 9. No caps on weekend working, Sundays are currently 1 in 6 max. 10. No weekend payment currently around £26 Saturday and £40 Sunday. Depending on roster frequency a loss of just over £1k 11. Start time, at present need to be at collection point or on patch en route to 1st job. New contract you will need to be on your 1stjob at start time and should be within 30mins from home. So technically 30 mins of unpaid hours. You will be told by the system when to collect your parts and allocated the travel time for this. 12. Overtime rates will all be at 1.33% of hourly rate. Currently from 1.25 upto 200% 13. EA (Emergency call out throughout the evening and night) is the biggest hit as going from 200% to 1.33%. 14. Will now be rostered to work on bank holidays and apart from Christmas, Boxing day and NYD will attract no extra payments. 15. Current 6 monthly roster will change to 6 weeks rolling roster making planning your outside time a lot harder. Also, any holiday booked outside the 6-week window will be at 40 hours regardless of what that future shift time will be. 16. Loss of 28/45 hour summer and winter shifts replaced with 32/44 min and max depending on workloads and not summer and winter. 17. Our managers will remain on a 37-hour week and these extra hours will I assume only be covered by a duty manager if they decide to answer the phone. Good luck at 7am and up to 9pm 18. Loss of 3-day weeks in summer when work loads are low. Minimum will be a 4-day week. 19. Work systems are old, and the company have stated that these needs updating to accommodate todays demands. New contract relies on these but no commitment or time scales as to when these will be updated. 20. If an engineer’s performance is below the required new untested target, then a new untested performance management will be used and could result in dismissal within 3 months. 21. Overtime will only be paid once your CTAP balance is positive so could be doing OT just to balance the books. 22. No confirmed details to say if consolidating London weighting will affect pension cap. 23. You will only receive time credits whilst working or if waiting for a job. So, if you have 20mins left on shift and do not want a job then you loose 20mins from CTAP. Also, if you request a job in this time anything could come down and you will be forced to take it and work OT or loose the wait time. 24. QDOS will be no longer so no more payments for selling products and upgrades. You will be allocated a set time into CTAP for this. 25. No commitment to stop contractors picking the best jobs and travel plans. All the company have committed to is looking at this later. Means they get better pay and we lose out n CTAP. 26. Job Recall time currently at 10 days will change to 28 days even if it unrelated. 27. No travel time will be credited if you need to pick up parts from another engineer. So, you will be penalised for doing the right thing for our customer. 28. No more quarterly bonus. 29. Rest day working will only be paid if you have a positive balance in CTAP 30. Business have agreed some long duration time takes a lot longer than the time allocated. Again, no change of this and hopefully something they will look at later. 31. All Training roles have gone and manager/CDMs will coach engineers even though many have been off the tools for ages. 32. If you log a lead and that goes ahead you will still get a recall if we need to go back within 28days. Even if the installer is at fault and not the engineer. 33. CTAP is not in your Terms and Conditions so no collective agreement for the future of this. 34. Some current work tasks will not be left to an engineer’s judgement rather than credit the relevant time to these and protect safety. 35. No longer be able to carry over or sell holiday entitlement. 36. April 2019 the company made a commitment in the pay agreement to 400 new apprentices by 2023, only 48 so far to date. Half the time gone and only 10% of this has been fulfilled.