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Originally Posted by sollp
In house installation in NTL have disapeared years ago in NTL, there has only been a few left over the past couple of years, i'm assuming that there is still in house installations within ex Telewast? By the sounds of it there is, well unfortunately this is one area that will definately go, as for Service Tech's and Network Tech's there has always been rumours for years that this will also happen, maybe it will or won't.
Unfortunately for Ex-Telewest people, if you had a happy work place when working for Telewest, be prepared for a shock as the fun has stopped now. For the next 5 years or so you will be slowly broken down, every aspect of what is spent from overtime to a set of new batteries will be scrutinized. Since NTL became NTL in in 1999 ish this has been happening. Constant reorganization and cut backs ect. So as is said on the advert "Buckle up people your in for a bumpy ride".
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Very true, they did systematically break the workforce but before they were ntl. I think it was 1996 when they took over the cable company I worked for, the first thing they did was try to force employees to accept the CableTel bonus scheme. We worked for a poor pay and they wanted to hold back around 10% of our salary for a quarterly bonus. They gave up on that idea but instead tackled people individually with bully tactics, the HR department was more like the Gestapo. They looked at my position and because I was in a senior engineering position earning the same as a CableTel network technician, they changed my job title instead of increasing my wages. They of course expected me to carry on doing the same tasks as before, they also tried to get me to sign a new contract taking away the enhanced redundancy entitled I had achieved due to my staff status, and tried to make me work 40 instead of 37.5 hours without compensation. I said "No" and they said "Fine, we will sack you" I said "You do whatever you feel is right" They ammended my contract and actually increased it by £1000.
There have been so many horror stories like this, and so many people just getting up and walking out. There have been countless examples of people applying for jobs internally, offered the position at X amount and then being told they can only have X amount rise and not what they were promised.
They stepped up their activities by trying to take benefits away from the orig ntl broadcast people, they were strong and retained their benefits. They introduced new T&C's for new starters and that caused big problems due to the huge gap in T&C's amongst employees. I noticed when I left in 2001 that they were starting to increase pressure and take away benefits without compensation, and through all this they liked to refer to employees as associates, it was just a polite way of saying you were like something stuck to the bottom of the companies shoes.
Theres no point in talking about unions, I joined a union just before cableTel took us over in 1996. When ntl they took over CWC, the CWU were touting for members, ntl management had always said they had no room for unions, so they played their ace card by doing a deal with a tame union.
That deal with the tame union finally put the nail in the coffin for fair treatment of staff.