AIBU that the actions of British Gas set a scary precedence for the future of UK employers?
Long rant ahead regarding specifics of British Gas, but essentially, I’m annoyed that in our era companies can carry out fire and rehire and are not even ashamed by their bullying tactics. What happened to workers rights? When did they vanish? The PM and over 100 MPs encouraged BG to ditched the fire and rehire and sent a strongly worded letter to that effect, yet the company and others like British Airways (who did back down I believe) seem unashamed to use such barbaric tactics.
Aibu to think tactics like fire and rehire should be abolished?
For those who aren’t aware , British Gas are firing and rehiring their engineer work force. As a company BG have suffered losses year on year, they have lost customers, fallen off feb FTSE 100m massively drop in share price and are categorised as unstable. It’s all not Covid related, Covid probably helped them a lot this year really, but of course they choose now to do this to their staff.
What has happened is engineers and staff have been leaving for years and have not been being replaced, customers are now not able to get appointments as simply there isn’t enough staff to go around.
This year the front line staff worked through lockdowns in the home of customers, often without PPE in the beginning and are told they have to attend Covid positive homes. In addition, the company asked them to volunteer in their uniforms and vans to promote the business, many engineers and staff have up hours of time delivering for food banks and wherever they could, while working, to help promote the business.
Then in the summer they announced job cuts and restructures as well as announcing fire and rehire as did British Airways. The MD even slated BA on their tactics, which he is doing as bad to his own employees.
Yes, BG need to modernise their contacts and yes that is going to mean major compromise from the engineers but what they are asking is pushing it too far and will ultimately kill the business as more will leave.
They want to cut pay, make it more in line with other engineer jobs, they are taking away shift allowances etc which this equates to about a £3000 cut in pay a year.
They want to increase hours, they state this is a 3 hour increase, but pay isn’t going to reflect this, so in addition to the pay decrease, they will work more hours, for less pay.
They work from home now, so start and finish time is from home, although they have tried to argue this for years and many if not most, engineers start early and finish late so they are working their entire working day. I get it, it’s loss of money, so now they won’t pay the first/last half an hour, so if they have to 30 minutes for their first job, that needs to be in their own time and same at the end of the day. As I say many do this already but for some employees that don’t, it’s effectively 30 minutes twice a day extra, so an extra 2.5 hours a day.
They will also introduce a rota which means some weeks they will work 4 hours extra in addition to the 3 hours extra (they will also then have the opportunity to work less some weeks if the company dictates this), so some weeks they will work 7 hours more than they work now, and if they don’t currently come in “early/late ” (which is legal) then those engineers will be working an extra 12 hours than now on those weeks.
They will also lose some holidays, current overtime rates, current sick leave entitlement replaced, will be expected to pay for health care from the company scheme, and various other things.
In addition to this they are introducing a scheme into their contacts that they call a bonus scheme, it’s not really, what it actually is is a way to get more time out of them and I think this is the scariest bit really. They have come up with averages of job times, and set a limit on how much time an engineer can spend in a particular job. Say that’s 30 minutes for a service and 60 minutes for a breakdown for ease of explaining. If the engineer takes less than 30 minutes to service a boiler and out on way to next job, they are quids in, if they take longer they owe the company. They acknowledge that some jobs will take longer but they should be able to complete most within the job times and earn themselves extra to make up for the loss of pay.
The problem is 1. This massively compromises safety 2. The entire point of averages is that yes, sometimes it make take less but equally it will just as often take more time, so your never going to “earn” enough to cash out without comprising safety and without up-selling to a customer who is already paying more than the average for a supposedly better product, which how can it be if they can’t spend the time?
Engineers say it’s impractical and will not work. If they end up “owing” the company time for not going fast enough, then they will have two options 1. Face a disciplinary process, which is a three months and your out process or 2. And this is what their managers are telling them to do, come in on your day off and make up for lost time, for free. So their working week can be even more than they’re suggesting.
I think this will massively compromise customer safety and satisfaction (which they are also scored on). Also part of that is, currently if they get to the end of the day and there isn’t enough time to drive to another job, then they can go home, usually heading home 10/15 minutes early, under this schedule they must be active at their last minute, so they have to work past their finish time every day (or they owe time), so everyday they must be working past their finish time. They say that’s fine because maybe the next day you finish a bit earlier, which is fine in theory, but essentially if you have a bunch of rubbish jobs you could work past your finish time everyday and still not gain hours through no fault of your own, and we aren’t taking about 10/15 past now, we are taking 1.5 -2 hours when you factor in driving to the job, doing the Job, trying to sell products, driving home. Which has significant impacts on family life especially when most families both people are working with children and trying to balance childcare.
Even if they did all that and ended up with hours to cash out, it’s set on a scale, some or worth significantly less than their current hourly rate. Plus they have work lined up, so they won’t be able to say, oh I want to finish early today and use their hours, as the work is already line up, and they can’t do it in advance as they have no idea if the hours will still be there.
It’s frustrating as engineers understand the situation, and are willing to take some hits, but this situation is impossible.
Even more frustrating is the constant threats but their managing director and the fact despite the company failing and him telling the engineers if they don’t agree then they will kill the company, he is happy to take a 2 million bonus, as well as the rest of the SLT, and pay out dividends to share holders. They introduce a near impossible “bonus” scheme for engineers which mean many will be working for free, in a business is near jeopardy and yet give themselves a bonus? That I don’t understand. Staff morale is terrible, share prices are terrible, customer experience (based in Facebook) is awful, on what does a MD base is bonus on?