UPDATE: BT Makes Improved Pay Offer In Bid To Avert Strike

8th Jun 2010 09:09

(Adds detail, trade union comment) By Michael Carolan Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. telecommunications giant BT Group (BT) said Tuesday it has made an improved pay offer to its staff as it seeks to avert the first strike by its employees for 23 years. "A two-year offer has been made but I cannot confirm the details," a spokesman for the company said. "Industrial action is in no-one's interest," he added, "so we hope the new offer will receive a positive response." The Communication Workers Union, or CWU, confirmed it had received a letter from BT on Monday night but refused to comment on the details of the offer until its negotiating team had studied it fully. The 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 pledged to bring back call center and back office jobs from India, the report said. The BT spokesman would neither confirm nor deny these details. The CWU, which represents around 55,000 of BT's 128,000 workers, said Friday it would ballot for strike action after BT allowed a deadline to pass without improving its one-year 2% pay offer. The CWU had asked for 5%. 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 04:09 ET (08:09 GMT)