BT improves pay deal to avoid strike

8th Jun 2010 13:06

BT has increased its pay offer to angry staff in a bid to head off the company's first national strike since 1987.The phones giant says it will pay 55,000 workers signed up to the Communication Workers (CWU) Union 2% more this year and another 3% next year.Union leaders want a 5% wage rise this year and had threatened industrial action if their demands weren't met by 4 June.Most of BT's CWU members are engineers, so any walkout could severely disrupt phone and broadband services."This offer is an attempt to break the current impasse with the CWU," BT said. "We hope that they will consider it seriously and respond positively. Industrial action is in no one's interests."The CWU, which said last week that "only a revised pay offer will bring this dispute to an end," is studying the new proposal.There's anger at what the CWU calls "double standards" when pay increases for bosses are compared with other staff.Chief executive Ian Livingstone is set to get a 6% rise this year, although 4% is promised to charity, while finance director Tony Chanmugam is in line for 7%.