"BT awards tens of thousands of staff £1,500 as strikes end", 28 November 2022

BT has awarded tens of thousands of staff hit hardest by the cost of living crisis a £1,500 pay rise, bringing to an end a protracted and bitter dispute and the first national strike action in 35 years.

The telecoms company...is to give all staff earning £50,000 or less a year the permanent rise – a total of about 71,000 employees.

The deal means that all of BT’s approximately 58,000 frontline workers, including call centre staff and engineers, will benefit, as will about half of the managers in its UK operation.

The company, which said that, overall, 85% of its UK-based staff would benefit from the cost of living pay rise, employs about 100,000 staff in total.

“This award is based on the principles we have followed throughout this difficult period,” said Philip Jansen, the chief executive at BT. “It gets help to as many of our colleagues as possible, favours our lower paid colleagues, and gives people the security of a built-in, pensionable increase to their pay.”

BT said the pay deal had been brokered with the support of the CWU, which represents about 40,000 of the company’s employees and will recommend that members vote in favour of the new offer at a consultative ballot next month....

BT has also said it would still run a pay review for UK staff next year, but this will be pushed back from April to September to “take into account the cost of living pay rise”....

“I wish to pay tribute to our members for coming out to strike in such serious numbers,” said Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary of the CWU. “Their determination has moved BT into a position where they could no longer ignore the case for a consolidated pay rise. Without such unity, the company would have offered a cost of living bung at the very best.”...