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Originally Posted by injuneer
I know of 3 or 4 cases within Ntl where the company has backed down once the CWU were involved, mainly health and safety issues. I think it's worth the subscription just to get the legal backing, should you need it. It's much harder for them to push you around if somone is quoting employment law to them. It's a pity they can't do much about pay until they become recognised, the pay scales in ntl are a joke, there are Senior engineers being paid less than engineers just because the latter joined the company at a later date on a higher basic wage and I'm talking quite large disparities here. The gap gets wider each year as well. Being a long serving employee counts for nowt, a bit like banks giving new savers higher interest rates than loyal customers. Ntl management don't understand the meaning of the word loyal.
I'm not a bean I'm a free man !!  |
The wages problem has been in the company from almost day one CableTel, I was working for a company bought out by CableTel shortly before CableTel bought NTL. My personal problem was having a job title "Central Support Engineer" that meant I was responsible for engineering support to all the small headends the company had around the company, and responsible for repairing headend/network equipment to component level, and designing new equipment to be used on the network.
The problem when CableTel/NTL took over was my pay, I was getting about 16K in those days and a non-sign written fully expensed company car. ntl found themselves in a dilema, they could either match my pay to other people carrying out similar tasks in the company by increasing my pay by at least 8K a year, or they could change my job title to Technician to match my pay.
I wont offer any prizes for guessing!
Yes they changed my job title to technician, and removed my staff status and eligibility to enhanced redundancy entitlement. I was the only employee out of 130 that was affected by the problem. I did complain and got told by an ntl manager, sign the new contract or be sacked. I did not sign and told him to do whatever he saw fit, this resulted in a 1K increase in my salary to compensate for loss of redundancy benefits.
I internally transfered shortly after into an ntl network Technician position, I was earning about the same as the other techs, but a few other techs who transfered under the same circumstances were earning a good 5K less than I was, and the only reason was because they transferred internaly and couldn't get more than a 5% rise.
The 5% rise caused many problems for the better employees looking for promotion, I applied for a more senior position and was successfull. I was up against a couple of external candidates and was told I was the best for the job, however the pay scale for the job started higher than the position I was already in, it would of meant a 7% rise just to get me on the bottom of the ladder, but on the other hand one of the number 2 choice for the job an external candidate could be taken on at the top of the pay scale.
This was the big problem, technicians/engineers were being taken on to replace the good ones leaving, and in many cases they were no better than the existing ones ntl already had. They were however being paid about 3K a year more to attract them to the company, and to rub salt in the wounds were being trained by the lower paid existing technicians.
I had a good friend who also transferred under similar circumstances, and he was getting about 4K less than the next lowest paid person in the department, his boss admitted that he was one of the best workers and tried his best by getting him regular 6 monthly rises in an attempt to bring him inot line with everyone else. This backfired when he had a change of manager and the new one went back on the promises and even threatened him with disciplinary action if he didn't take on extra duties such as call out. Things got very bitter as he was earning an about 7-8K a year less than the average person on the same grade, he refused to go on callout until it was sorted, as every hour of overtime would be paid at a lower rate than anyone else.
It got sorted when HR realised he would take it as far as he needed, and would not back down. I wrote a letter on his behalf, and HR who had previously told him "Sign the contract and we will sort the pay issue out seperately" had the cheek to say the pay was sorted and they had been working on it for a while.
The pay problem for Technicians/Engineers in the Headend/Switch/Field has always existed, I have always thought it's down to the way the company/senior managers (including HR) feels these employees are like something stuck to the bottom of their shoes.