BT Consumer Update October 2016

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BT Consumer Update October 2016

Your Prospect
Prospect is the trade union for managers in BT. I have recently been appointed as the union’s Negotiations Officer for the BT Consumer line of business. I previously managed the union’s relationships with Openreach and with BT Wholesale. I am looking forward to working with our members and Reps in BT Consumer and would like to see us develop a bigger and stronger union branch.



Doncaster Call Centre
We are in the process of growing our branch committee, to incorporate members from across BT Consumer. I will be visiting as many of our major sites as possible over the coming months and look forward to listening to our members views. This will begin with Doncaster call centre on Tuesday 15th November. We will be holding a drop in for members from 12:00 to 13:00 in meeting room 3.

If you have not been involved in the trade union before, now is a good time to get involved. The company will face many significant issues in the coming months and we aim to be a constructive voice for the managerial workforce. If you are interested in being involved with the union, possibly as a local contact or Rep, then please email [email protected].

We are particularly interested in developing new Reps in each of our call centres - full training is provided. This will help us to respond to your concerns and to tackle any local issues as they arise. If this is something of interest to you then please email Kacie. 

Industrial Relations Council
The BT Consumer Industrial Relations Council (IRC) is the consulting body between the company and our members. The Chair and Vice Chair of the IRC are Mike Cassidy and Carolyn Spence. They are both employees in BT Consumer and receive some facility time from BT to take up cases on behalf of members and to consult with the company on proposed changes.

Mike has worked for BT for 19 years, mainly in Consumer and is a case handler across all lines of business, chair of the IRC, health and safety rep, Branch Secretary for Newcastle and Middlesbrough and sits on both the BT Committee and the Sector Executive Committee.

Carolyn has worked for BT for 28 years predominantly in Retail/Consumer and been active in the union for the majority of that time as a case handler, branch officer, IRC member and more recently as a member of the BT committee.

We are keen to widen the IRC to incorporate more members from amongst our Reps and case handlers to support the work that Mike and Carolyn do for you.

Meeting with BT Consumer
We were due to meet with senior management in BT Consumer recently but unfortunately the meeting was cancelled, but we hope it will be rescheduled quickly.

There are a number of concerns that have been raised by members with our reps, our IRC Committee and directly with me.

These include the do-ability of the call centre manager roles within a normal working week, the availability of flexible working (particularly for working mothers), work-life balance and the impact of the new Attendance Allowance.

These are all issues we will be raising with the company on your behalf.