British Gas fire and rehire part of their work force

[Newnamefor2021]

Today a unknown number of engineers were given their notice, they will be fired without any redundancy in the 14th.

The reason is they want to introduce new contracts. Which is fair enough. But the CEO put in place on day 3 of negotiations a fire and rehire notice. They were told, accept or be fired.

The contract has some major flaws and some big asks, the major problems are;

SAFETY- they will time jobs I.e. 20 minutes for a service, if this takes longer the engineer will owe the company this time and have to come in on days off or work in to make back. Engineers say this is unrealistic and will impact safety and customer satisfaction.

So many unknowns - when questions are asked the company says they haven't worked all the issues out yet. There are a lot of unknowns and a lot of surprises. The company has told engineers they need to put their trust in the company, a company that issues a fire notice before they and even discussed the terms.

Increased hours - minimum 3 hours, plus first and last 30 minutes of travel is your own time, so that's an extra 1 hour a day. Plus with the hours they may owe plus dynamic rostering which means the combat can inverse their hours on a given week if they need more cover.

Less pay - increased hours without the pay for it, loss of bank holiday, weekend, night payments, overtime cut etc etc

Engineers have taken a battering to their pay and pension the past decade, they are always told to trust and this will be the thing that saves the company. They took a massive cut to their pensions a couple of years ago, they were promised it would help the company and they were promised the company would employ new workers/apprenticeships but they didn't. So now after years of not meeting their promises they are not really trusting management.

They also works throughout the pandemic, like so many and went the extra mile, they delivered food parcels for the trussel trust to promoters company, all the time being told they company was doing fine.

Anyway, sorry for the long post.

Just so annoyed it's happened, it's been allowed to happen and that it's an easy and legal way to get rid of employees without redundancy pay. What this may mean to all of us. It's too late for British Gas, but the rules around this sort of action need to be changed to stop the abuse of this legal loophole.

@sausagerollcake

You can't properly service a boiler in 20 mins!

Exactly. The bosses are so out of touch with reality it's unbelievable. It's like if the engineers say that won't work they are determined to prove it will. They say this is putting the customer first but what customer wants to pay a huge sum for essentially going go be nothing if it's 20 minutes.

Add on the fact that that will be the average time. So that's means they expect them to be quicker if they are to make up any time so they won't end up working for free.

It's so upsetting and disheartening. You wonder where the shareholders are and why they are letting this happen?

@tentative3 exactly - it's not necessary the changes either it's the sheer volume of them and the impact that will have. It's essentially going to be impossible to earn back what they were earning because of the sheer amount of changes.

Plus when the add on impossible conditions like the 20 minute services it's going to encourage unsafe practices, they are having to recruit engineers due to the amount that left and are advertising for newly qualified and unexperienced engineers, it just seems like a massive disaster waiting to happen.

It’s actually time and 41% for ours (don’t ask why) for Saturdays and time and 82% on Sundays plus £25 call out fee (or retainer)! (I think the call out fee is being increased actually)

@Comefromaway

It’s actually time and 41% for ours (don’t ask why) for Saturdays and time and 82% on Sundays plus £25 call out fee (or retainer)! (I think the call out fee is being increased actually)

If you ask the CEO oF Centrica the engineers are still going to be paid best in the business and higher than any other and that's why they want them to have a 5 to 10 year pay freeze too.

If your company is in South Wales then let me know.

It's bonkers though isn't it. I haven't heard a single engineer say they wouldn't be happy to pay cuts etc but it's the way it's all been handled. This fire and rehire should be out lawed.

I know lots of engineers that work on or visit elderly relatives after they finish to make sure that the boiler is still ok (if it was an intermittent fault for example). Don't get me wrong, there are good and bad in every company but I've certainly seem a lot more go the extra mile than those who don't.

Unfortunately not.

I can’t comment on hourly rates of course, British Gas might pay more per hour, I don’t know. We are midlands & rates are based on BESA rates plus we do a lot of commercial work and for landlords. We are a touch expensive for domestic servicing, but we don’t rip people off, is something is unsafe they say so and isolate it but if it can be repaired cost effectively we will do that and not overcharge for boiler replacements.

@Comefromaway

Unfortunately not.

I can’t comment on hourly rates of course, British Gas might pay more per hour, I don’t know. We are midlands & rates are based on BESA rates plus we do a lot of commercial work and for landlords. We are a touch expensive for domestic servicing, but we don’t rip people off, is something is unsafe they say so and isolate it but if it can be repaired cost effectively we will do that and not overcharge for boiler replacements.

They used to be around £19ph and now it's going to be £15/16 I think.

I have no idea what they charge, says from 90 on their website but I doubt anyone pays that, but then again, it's only 20 minutes.

That is a lot more than ours are on.

Fair enough. I think most service and repair engineers bring in around the 40k mentioned by the CEO. However that was with all the overtime, nights, bank holidays etc. Certainly not the minimum of 40 he said and they are paid the most out of the engineers, some are paid around 26,000. It seems likely the service and repair engineers will earn around 36000 going forward, but again, everything is done on blind faith, and the company don't give the details.

The said they would stop micromanaging them and their time as they we earning time and yet introduced a system that does exactly they, now the computer tells the, pick up parts now or have lunch now. It's so bizarre, they own them.

There has been so much hype about this, and although I agree it is an absolutely disgusting way to treat staff. Some engineers have actually been given quite substantial payrises to coincide with the changes in contract and are happy, but this information is just not being reported. So I don't think it necessarily a true reflection of the whole work force. However, to those affected it is shocking.

We ditched British Gas a while back thanks to the lazy, lying engineers. Several times they didn't bother turning up and no one notified us and the last one blatantly lied by telling DH it was illegal for us not to have a smart meter and our energy would be cut off. We had some good engineers but sadly they were outnumbered.

@Frugallyfree

There has been so much hype about this, and although I agree it is an absolutely disgusting way to treat staff. Some engineers have actually been given quite substantial payrises to coincide with the changes in contract and are happy, but this information is just not being reported. So I don't think it necessarily a true reflection of the whole work force. However, to those affected it is shocking.

Where did you hear that? I can assure you that's not true.

They were not given any pay raises at all. They weren't officially given a pay cut they but their hourly rates decreased and all anti social pay removed.which will result in a 15% cut to pay.

No engineer was happy.

Many signed yes, but essentially what happened was they were asked to sign a form which asked if they were prepared to keep working for British Gas, many signed, they were told after this was intent to sign the contract, they were then given £1300 in their bank accounts, not on payday, and they couldn't reject it. They were told if they didn't sign the company would deduct £2000 from their pay. Due to tax.

When people still didn't sign early, they took away all bonuses pay, all sales pay, they forgot to pay for some evening worked etc and they decided that they would take away any strike pay from future days. So for example to get paid on the 15, usual cut off is say the 1st, but in this case they took pay off them up to the 15th which was calculated before they hadn't worked it. So in the pay they were mince figures and owing a lot of money. Many couldn't afford this and so had to sign.

The company have backed out of any agreements it made.

Over the entire company there were many happy to sign, office staff were on many different contacts, veterans pay was much higher but newer staff much lower. This changed it to a fairer system and as there is a high staff turnover in the office the staff generally were happy as for many it was an increase.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

We ditched British Gas a while back thanks to the lazy, lying engineers. Several times they didn't bother turning up and no one notified us and the last one blatantly lied by telling DH it was illegal for us not to have a smart meter and our energy would be cut off. We had some good engineers but sadly they were outnumbered.

That's a shame, there isn't many left now. I can't see the company surviving this now. Such a shame you have had such a terrible experience though. Sales are pushed heavily and some engineers seem to push any way they can for sales, which is wrong as what customer wants a engineer to put sales pitches to them.

I understand they are told to sell but it was the outright lying I objected to, both about not turning up and the smart meter. The engineer also tried to make DH speak to his manager on the phone about the smart meter. DH is partially deaf and sometimes struggles on the phone so he just refused to speak to him. I can imagine someone less confident being frightened by this sort of bullying.

We now use a local independent company and the difference in service levels is unbelievable.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

I understand they are told to sell but it was the outright lying I objected to, both about not turning up and the smart meter. The engineer also tried to make DH speak to his manager on the phone about the smart meter. DH is partially deaf and sometimes struggles on the phone so he just refused to speak to him. I can imagine someone less confident being frightened by this sort of bullying.

We now use a local independent company and the difference in service levels is unbelievable.

I don't blame you, I'm deaf myself so totally get it. So annoying.