3rd UPDATE: UK Union To Press Ahead With BT Strike Ballot

8th Jun 2010 18:24

(Adds BT comment) By Michael Carolan and Lilly Vitorovich Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--The U.K.'s Communication Workers Union, which represents just under half of BT Group PLC's (BT.A.LN) 128,000 workers, vowed Tuesday to press ahead with balloting members on industrial action despite the telecom firm's revised two-year pay offer. The CWU said it is disappointed that there is "no material improvement" in BT's pay offer for this year, but is willing to discuss the revised offer with management if there is scope for significantly improving its 2% pay increase offer. Until any real progress is made, CWU will press ahead with balloting members on industrial action, the union said. The CWU is demanding a 5% pay increase this year for the 55,000 BT call center, engineering and retail workers it represents. "We're very disappointed that BT's revised offer remains materially unchanged for this year in terms of pay," Andy Kerr, CWU deputy general secretary said in a statement. The CWU received a letter from BT on Monday night with details of the revised pay offer. A BT spokesman said the firm's "door has always been open to the CWU", adding that it has written to the union again on Tuesday confirming this is the case. "Our revised offer contains many new elements that would benefit their members and so we are disappointed by their initial response. Not only have we tabled an improved offer for 2010 and a new one for 2011, we have also offered new guarantees on job security and were prepared to go the extra mile to try and settle this," he said. BT has offered to hold formal talks with the CWU and "remain hopeful" that they will start to show flexibility, he added. BT and CWU were tightlipped on the details of the revised offer, but Press Association said the offer was worth 2% this year and 3% the following year, with bonuses of GBP250. BT has also promised not to make any compulsory redundancies between now and the end of 2011 and has pledged to bring back call center and back office jobs from India, according to the report. The CWU said on June 4 that it would ballot for strike action after BT allowed a deadline to pass without improving its 2% pay offer for 2010. Any ballot would take around two weeks. If BT staff were to vote in favor, the CWU would have to give BT seven days' notice of a walkout. Prospect, BT's second biggest union with 30,000 members, mainly managers, recently agreed to a 2% pay rise. The threat of strike action came after BT Chief Executive Ian Livingston's bonus payments more than tripled, taking his total remuneration to over GBP2 million as he presided over a recovery in the company's financial performance. BT last month swung to a net profit in the fiscal fourth quarter from a loss a year earlier, and forecast further gains. In the year to March, U.K. pay rose 1.2% in the private sector, compared with 4% in the public sector, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. -By Michael Carolan, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-7842-9278; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 08, 2010 13:24 ET (17:24 GMT)