Latest news

PERSONAL INJURY CLAIM - HEARING DAMAGE - DEADLINE APPROACHING! ACT NOW!

Mick Teece, Branch Assistant Secretary writes, 'Having been in correspondance with the solicitiors dealing with East Midlands branch members' claims for tinnitus and deafness, it is clear that the issue is a "biggie" and affected a substantial number of our members' health. We are re-issuing the bulletin below to members in an attempt to minimise the possibility of members missing out on a claim becaus they missed our original posting.

Members may be interested to know that we've written out to our "retained" members - that's those that have either left BT under Release or New Start terms and kept their membership on - and our retired members, some of which are well into their eighties. The response from them has been surprisingly high and we are processing a significant ammount of claims on their behalf.

The union's Legal Services is encouraging any BT engineers who suffer from tinnitus and deafness and who have used oscillators and amplifier tone sets supplied by BT to contact the union.

It appears that many BT engineers have been negligently exposed to high noise whilst using this equipment and may be eligible for compensation.

Compensation claims tend to be successful where the engineer used the green or a combination of the green and yellow tone sets, whereas BT dispute liability where the engineer used only the yellow or blue sets.

If you have used the green and/or yellow and/or blue tone sets and now suffer from tinnitus or are hard of hearing you may well be entitled to claim compensation. The average award is in the region of £7,000.but can be significantly higher in certain cases.

A number of these claims are currently being litigated in the Cardiff County Court and the Court has asked the solicitors concerned to consider whether a Group Litigation Order would be appropriate.

If a Group Litigation Order is imposed there would be a cut off date for registering new claims. CWU is therefore encouraging any members who are potentially affected to register a claim via the freephone CWU helpline: 0800 8046674 (lines open Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm. One of our solicitors will contact you within 48 hours).

Tony Rupa, Head of CWU Legal Services, said: "It is important that you register a claim today so that we can ensure that your claim is dealt with now and within any time limits that may be set by the Court. "If you have any questions about your eligibility to make a claim, please contact the helpline directly and one of our advisers will help you."

CWU Legal Services Scheme is a benefit of membership and you are entitled to free legal help if you or a member of your family has suffered injury due to someone else's fault, whether the accident happened in or out of work.

Legal services helpline: 0800 8046674 Monday - Friday

BT PAY

Please find attached the Independent Scrutineer’s report detailing the result of the consultative ballot on BT pay.

Ballot Papers despatched - 44,802

Ballot Papers returned - 27,733

Invalid papers - 7

Voting YES - 24,017

Voting NO - 3,709

The CWU has confirmed acceptance of the pay offer, which is backdated to 1st January 2010 and will be implemented in August salaries. Details of the pay deal are below. this should be paid into August salaries.

Details - 9.3% pay deal with BT

The Communication Workers Union has reached a three year pay deal with BT worth 9.3 per cent for staff represented by the union. This has now been accepted by members.

The deal is as follows:

· A 3% consolidated and fully pensionable increase to base pay which will flow through to pay-related allowances, including the pay and pension supplement, backdated to 1 January 2010, for all employees in post at the point of implementation which we expect to be August 2010.

· A 3% consolidated and fully pensionable increase to base pay which will flow through to pay-related allowances, including the pay and pension supplement, from 1 January 2011.

· A 3% consolidated and fully pensionable increase to base pay which will flow through to pay-related allowances, including the pay and pension supplement, from 1 January 2012. For this part of the review only should the November 2011 RPI (published in December 2011) be above 3.2% or below 2.5% then both sides agree to meet and to discuss the impact of this and seek to agree an optimum position. Both parties agree to enter into these discussions to seek to ensure that the impact of a volatile RPI is mitigated, both for the business and employees.

Explanation: The Pay Review date of 1st of April remains unchanged. This is a three year deal wef 1st April 2010 to 31st March 2013. However, in order to get more Pay & Pensionable improvements for members, the CWU negotiated that this year's pay deal wef 1st April 2010 would backdate to 1st January 2010. This creates significant % improvements in the pay deal for this year and real improvements "forever" on the Pensions calculations, by applying this increase to the latter part of last year's pay period. Also, members will receive the pay increases "early" wef 1st January (not 1st April) for the two consecutive years. This means that effectively the 2nd year's increase is due in less than 6 months time.

The offer is fully consolidated and pensionable and it provides a 9.3% increase to basic pay over three years.

MEMBERS IN BT OPENREACH - Please be aware that by now you should have received your new attendance patterns commencing in September. If these patterns are not what you expected please contact the union for support and advice.

Our contact details are 0845-600 1546 or union@cwu-eastmidlands.org.uk.

BT Retail – Project Holborn Update

It is anticipated that plans for Project Holborn will recommence with BT Retail following the resolution of the pay dispute.

Details will be provided to members in due course. A ballot of all affected members is still required before any proposals or attendance changes can be expected.

Project Holborn - overview

Strand 1 - Resourcing
Strand 2 – Attendance
Strand 3 – Performance Management/Management Style
Strand 4 – Incentivisation
Strand 5 – Training

The CWU had teams negotiating each strand and a Governance Team to oversee all aspects of the discussions and will meet on a regular basis.

BT stressed that their priority was the Attendance Strand, although it was agreed that these discussions were interlinked with the Resourcing profile, particularly the off shore piece and the return of jobs from India.

In October 2009 members working in certain BT Retail CS call centres were asked to volunteer to cover jeopardy periods on a voluntary basis, through until January 2010 (by which time it was hoped that negotiations would conclude). This was to enable the bringing back of work from overseas call-centres.

The CWU stressed that the need to address urgent concerns on the issue of Performance Management/Management Style as this was critical to the success of Project Holborn. The starting point for these discussions was the Leading the Way agreement.


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CWU EAST MIDLANDS BRANCH - SELF-DEFENCE GUIDE TO SURVIVING PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Members working in BT Retail will soon receive a copy of the booklet produced by the branch on how members can defend themselves if they face unfair and/or unwarranted Performance Management.

The booklet contains two template letters for use if necessary and these template letters are available here to be downloaded and amended according to each individual case and circumstances.

Template Letter Informal Complaint Performance Management

Template letter Formal Grievance Performance Management

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