Barry Mason
Engineers employed for British Gas began their latest four-day strike on February 12. Prior to that the engineers have held 16 days of strike action.
The members of the GMB trade union are opposing the imposition of inferior contracts through a “fire and rehire” scheme. Further four-day blocks of strike action are planned for February 19 and 26. The union says it will continue strike action through to mid-April.
According to the GMB, to date the strikes have led to a backlog of 210,000 home visits for repairs and a quarter of a million planned annual service visits have been cancelled. According to a survey conducted by polling company, Survation, 74 percent of British Gas customers support the workers’ action.
The inferior contracts would mean an effective 20 percent pay cut. The company announced restructuring plans in June last year, including shedding 5,000 jobs.
Following negotiations, three of the other unions recognised by British Gas—Unison, Unite and Prospect—reached agreements to accept the inferior terms. This includes 7,000 front-line office workers, most of whom are represented by Unison.
The GMB has done everything it can to try and reach a rotten agreement with the company. It held a consultative ballot in August after British Gas revealed its plans, returning a 90 percent vote in favour but delayed calling a strike ballot for months. This gave space for the other unions to negotiate their sellouts.
Only in November did the GMB ballot its members for strike action. The vote announced in December produced an 86 percent majority for strike action by gas and electrical engineers, and 89 percent by other British Gas GMB members.
Centrica, British Gas’s parent company, announced it was prepared to issue section 188 notices to its employees. This enables an employer who has failed to negotiate changes to fire and then reinstate its employees on different terms and conditions.
In fighting this threat, British Gas employees are combatting a national assault by big business on the working class. “Fire and rehire” ultimatums are becoming the chosen method by which companies push through long-planned attacks on workers’ jobs and conditions, often using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext.
The unions’ only concern is that such methods undermine their role as a labour police force, able to impose changes on behalf of the employers while enjoying a comfortable working relationship with the company. At a UK parliament business select committee discussing the dispute on February 2, GMB national officer Justin Bowden accused the company of “poisoning the well”.
Rather than appeal to solidarity from other sections of workers within British Gas or workers in other industries facing similar fire and re-hire threats, the GMB has directed its appeals to Centrica shareholders. It sent a letter signed by 4,850 GMB members and supporters, with a press release dated February 11 noting how it urged “high-profile investors, including Schroders, Standard Life Aberdeen and Blackrock to protect their investment and help secure a negotiated end to the industrial dispute.” The shareholders targeted own about 85 percent of Centrica.
The letter signed by GMB national secretary, Justin Bowden, states that “we wanted to convey to you—directly—the levels of anger felt by British Gas engineering workers at the 15 percent cuts in hourly pay and the loss of family time, which the Centrica management are attempting to impose under threat of firing thousands of workers if they do not comply.”
The union stressed, “We believe that we have a joint interest in persuading Centrica’s senior management from changing its current course, before more damage is done to the company (and, consequently, the value of your investment).”
The letter noted that the company had lost its competitive edge and was shedding customers, stating, “Centrica’s single greatest challenge is the long-term erosion of its customer base. More than three million customers have been lost over the last decade, and according to the July 2020 interim financial update, the company lost 296,000 home energy and services customers in the first six months of last year alone… GMB members did not seek this conflict, but with every day that passes the long-term structural threats to Centrica’s customer base will grow.”
Noting that some celebrities and social media influencers had spoken out against “fire and re-hire” tactics, the letter urged, “We want a sustainable future for Centrica—we fear that it is at risk of becoming a pariah company in UK public life instead.”
The letter reiterated GMB’s willingness to assist the company bring in the attacks on workers conditions stating, “We recognise that change is needed… Unilaterally tearing up collective agreements, and threatening to fire thousands of skilled and hard-to-replace workers… is not an approach that will secure an agreement… GMB stands ready to continue talks, but we are clear that ‘fire and rehire’ must be taken off the table.”
The letter concluded, “We would welcome dialogue with Centrica’s shareholders as part of the ongoing attempt to resolve this dispute and build a sustainable, long-term future for the company.”
UK companies are increasingly turning to “fire and rehire” ultimatums to push through long planned attacks, for which the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as an accelerator. Research by the Trades Union Congress highlighted this process. A report published in January by the TUC showed nearly one in 10 workers have had to re-apply for their jobs on inferior terms and conditions since March last year. Nearly a quarter of workers had experienced a cut in pay or hours since March.
A recent edition of the homeless charity magazine Big Issue spoke to striking gas engineers. Bill Hawthorne from Fife in Scotland told the magazine he could lose between £8,000 and £15,000 a year under the new contract. “I think that there is a domino effect for other companies too. British Airways started this threat of hire and refire and now British Gas is flexing their muscles? We see British Gas as a company that’s very family-orientated with a flexible workforce, but the new terms and conditions aren’t going to give us that.”
Dan, an engineer with 18 years with the company, said, “It’s kind of like a fight for everyone. Because if it happens here, it’s gonna happen everywhere in society, and if we win there is a chance that British Gas will probably try again in a couple of years. It’s just a nasty way of doing business.”
British Gas recently announced further job cuts on top of the 5,000 redundancies axed last year. The jobs targeted will be administration grades at British Gas’s centres in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester and Manchester.
The big six energy companies are under increasing pressure to cut costs as they continue to lose market share to new smaller energy companies. According to an energylivenews website report of February 4, the share of the electricity market of the big six fell from 82.7 percent in October 2015 to 71.8 percent in October 2020. For the share of the gas market the corresponding figures were 55.8 percent to 43.8 percent over the same period.
As the GMB’s letter to shareholders attests, its objective is ultimately to force a company-drafted agreement on its members. Workers can only fight for their own interests by establishing rank-and-file strike committees to take the struggle out of the hands of the union bureaucrats.
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