@AlexaRain
Hi, the original idea was to streamline the hundreds of contracts and balance it out. They engineers took the brunt as they needed more hours from them to meet demand so they increased their hours, their ways of working etc to accommodate what they said was a shortage of a million hours. They didn't increase their rate of pay so they effectively took a pay cut. Then they hacked away at their generous double rates of over time, night time working, bank holidays to just standard pay. Taking all that into account meant a fairly hefty pay cut and increased hours. Looking at an average engineer losing about 15%. The increased their standard working day and any antisocial working.
In addition they reduced sick leave and holidays.
They decided engineers could earn back time if they did their jobs quickly. So introduced something they called CTAP. It's was and still isn't a finished product but essentially they will set a time for a job. Is they now expect services to take 20 minutes. If they engineer finishes that job earlier they earn that time back as pay or money, if they take longer then they owe the company that time and need to work off that time for free or be fired. There are massive safety implications to this and customers don't want to pay premium prices for a in and out quick half done job, especially working with gas.
4 days into rolling this out they saw it wasn't well received to slapped fire and rehire on it. They said it was their insurance policy.
Obviously from that point BG didn't want to negotiate and engineers just wanted them to listen. It was messy.
BG broke down collective bargaining by offering individual contacts. They did things like pay them all a one off bonus of £1300 and then told they they would deduct £2000 from pay if they didn't sign the contracts (tax difference apparently). They deducted strike pay from future pays, cancelled all bonues, and stopped paying for sales. Result was that those who didn't sign individual contracts were in minus figures and after a month of work owed significant sums if they didn't sign (granted they had been given 1300 previously)
Many did sign. They continued to act immorally like that and do anything they could to get people to sign. There was huge sickness and mental health issues, one engineer killed him self.
They kept changing the rules and they did offer slightly more holidays (still less over all) if they signed. Eventually those who didn't sign were fired, no redundancy at all. They literally collected their vans and demanded their old smelly work shoes back too. Vans were taken away and stick checked and any items from years ago that were missing they charged them for.
The next day those who signed were told any of the extra things they agreed they were not honouring as it wasn't collectively agreed. So they didn't have to honour it.
There is even a video circulating somewhere if the ceo Matthew Bateman laughing at the covid cases blowing up and riots in the us as it covered in the media the British Gas strikes. The same ceo had broken down in tears because of worry about his family during the first lockdown and hundreds of engineers messaged him and gave him support. The same engineers he mocked in this video.
It's all horrible and awful.
The result is they can't meet customer demands, look at social media and customers are waiting 6 weeks plus for breakdowns (previously this would have been covered within a week max, usually next day), they set up a company called local heroes which local engineers used abs British Gas matches them to jobs, bg take a 20% cut, so now customers let down are being told to use local heroes, the customer must pay local heroes and then bg will refund customer and engineer in 28 days if it meets their t & c.
It's bonkers!
Yes though, usually contract changes come with something to sweeten the deal but in this case it really really didn't, yes they get 1300 but that's tiny given those loses.
They are now told they need to work on and there is an unlimited compulsory overtime clause they didn't know about, also engineers are being told to aggressively push sales to save the company.
Truthfully most engineers I've spoken to don't plan on staying they just couldn't afford whet they did to them. They are treated like the cause of British gases problems and told they have signed happily and now need to turn things around.
The centrica ceo Chris O'Shea was put on position on March 2020 and announced this fire and rehire in June. 4 days into explaining these contract changes. He told a government panel that it wasn't right and he was given dodgy legal advice but still did it!
There are no winners with fire and rehire. It's immoral. British airways acted similarly, they didn't actually do it but nevertheless it destroyed their workforce.