The boss of BT just said the firm is too skint to dish out pay rises to staff, so a strike may be on the cards…
The boss of BT just said the firm is too skint to dish out pay rises to staff, so a strike may be on the cards…BT Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Philip Jansen told incensed staff that the telecom giant can’t afford to pay them more because of soaring costs and low growth while employees threatened to strike.
Large corporate employees in recent years will be familiar with the ‘town hall’ style virtual meetings. Well, in this one the BT CEO was apparently asked what he thought about workers struggling to pay bills, and others pointed to the fact his pay has apparently risen by 32% to £3.5 million this year.
He said BT’s revenue hasn’t increased for a few years and its energy bill, which is currently estimated to be £350 million, would jump by at least 50%, announced by Telecoms.com. He also pointed out other things they have been spending on recently, including fibre rollouts, taxes, dividends, interest payments on almost £20 billion in debt and the pension deficit. “When you add all that stuff up, we’re actually slightly in the negative – so we’ve actually taken on more debt to make all that work,” he said at the meeting. However, BT workers, it seems they might be up for striking. Apparently, The Communication Workers Union is in its final stages of balloting BT employees on whether to down tools. The union described the call as “a complete embarrassment” for Jansen and that “It is no surprise that a CEO with a £3.5 million pay package isn’t in touch with working people.”
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