CWU members hold picket line at Chester depot in national BT and Openreach strike

The workers held the action outside the BT Openreach Hartford Way Transport Depot, as part of what CWU said was a "rock solid" day of strike action, the first of two planned with the other being on August 1.

The dispute centres on workers opposing the imposition by company management of a flat-rate pay rise.

Earlier this year, BT offered and implemented a £1,500 per year pay increase for employees.

CWU say in the context of RPI inflation levels already hitting 11.7% this year, this is a dramatic real-terms pay cut.

CWU members picket at the BT Openreach Hartford Way Transport Depot off Bumpers Lane, Chester, in a pay dispute.

The union adds it is also in the context of BT making £1.3 billion in annual profit, with CEO Philip Jansen gaining a £3.5 million pay package – a 32% wage increase – while the Big Issue and the BBC have reported instances of BT Group offices establishing food banks to assist employees.

The workers on strike look after the vast majority of Britain’s telecoms infrastructure, from mobile phone connection, broadband internet and back-up generators to national health systems, cyber security and data centres.

Commenting on today’s BT Group strikes, a CWU spokesperson said: “Today’s strike has been nothing short of rock solid.

“In every town and city, BT Group employees manned over 400 picket lines, showing their opposition to a management that doesn’t seem to care about them.

“Today’s strike should be a wake-up call to Philip Jansen and BT Group that workers in this country will not sit idly by and watch their living standards crumble.

“The public is fed up at the level of corporate greed in this country today, and our members will be out again on Monday to tell BT Group that enough is enough.”

CWU members picket at the BT Openreach Hartford Way Transport Depot off Bumpers Lane, Chester, in a pay dispute.

This is the first national dispute in BT since 1987 and will involve close to 40,000 members.

The majority of workers working for BT work in contact centres and is the first national call centre workers strike in British history.

A BT Group spokesperson said: “At the start of this year, we were in exhaustive discussions with the CWU that lasted for two months, trying hard to reach an agreement on pay.

"When it became clear that we were not going to reach an accord, we took the decision to go ahead with awarding our team member and frontline colleagues the highest pay award in more than 20 years, effective 1st April.

“We have confirmed to the CWU that we won’t be reopening the 2022 pay review, having already made the best award we could. We’re balancing the complex and competing demands of our stakeholders and that includes making once-in-a-generation investments to upgrade the country’s broadband and mobile networks, vital for the UK economy and for BT Group’s future – including our people.

“While we respect the choice of our colleagues who are CWU members to strike, we will work to minimise any disruption and keep our customers and the country connected. We have tried and tested processes for large scale colleague absences to minimise any disruption for our customers and these were proved during the pandemic.”

The telecoms firm added: "We will work to reduce the impact of any industrial action by, for example, postponing any non-essential planned engineering or software updates - similar to what we did at the height of the pandemic and as we do over holidays like Christmas."