BT, Britain’s largest telecoms company, announced last week that it is slashing 13,000 jobs to boost profts. This is on top of 4,000 job cuts last year.
Most of the job losses will be among administrative and managerial staff.
“The scale of these job cuts is higher than had previously been speculated on and will come as a devastating blow,” said the Prospect union which represents the grades most affected.
The CWU union said the announcement was “disappointing” but that bosses had pledged investment in frontline engineering and call centres.
A BT worker told Socialist Worker, “People are angry because they feel they are being made to pay the price for failings in the boardroom. A common response was ‘Let’s start job cuts at the top’.”
Last year BT lost huge amounts because of corruption in its Italian division, BT Italia. And shareholders’ dividend payments have been guaranteed for two years.
Prospect needs to push for industrial action.