In House Techs to TUPE in Sept?

[JontyG]

Hiya peeps,

Believe the Telewest service techs meetings today are around changes to their working practise, shifts etc. Welcome to the big 5 hahaha.

Contracting out service techs has undoubtedly been looked at, and i wouldn't rule it out.
Rates (aug 05) paid to local contract co were just over £21 per hour. This is the contract company, not the tech. Typical day (7.5 hours) will see between 10 and 12 jobs completed. @11 jptpd this equates to just over £15 per truck and doesn't require the cable co to pay sickness, holiday, pension etc etc.

Of course the bean counters do not factor in the cost of maintaining the network that they are letting all and sundry play with. Here up north the lack of a disconnect policy, the removal of the role of jumper tech, the lack of quality inspections etc means that, if things continue as they are at present, the network will need knocking down and building again.
I dont blame contractors for doing what they can get away with, but the idiot who decided that contractors are the way forward needs his head looking at.

If you think Im exaggerating about the state of the network take a look at these piccies - see if you can guess which ones were taken before contractors were let loose

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by JontyG

Hiya peeps,

Believe the Telewest service techs meetings today are around changes to their working practise, shifts etc. Welcome to the big 5 hahaha.

Contracting out service techs has undoubtedly been looked at, and i wouldn't rule it out.
Rates (aug 05) paid to local contract co were just over £21 per hour. This is the contract company, not the tech. Typical day (7.5 hours) will see between 10 and 12 jobs completed. @11 jptpd this equates to just over £15 per truck and doesn't require the cable co to pay sickness, holiday, pension etc etc.

Of course the bean counters do not factor in the cost of maintaining the network that they are letting all and sundry play with. Here up north the lack of a disconnect policy, the removal of the role of jumper tech, the lack of quality inspections etc means that, if things continue as they are at present, the network will need knocking down and building again.
I dont blame contractors for doing what they can get away with, but the idiot who decided that contractors are the way forward needs his head looking at.

If you think Im exaggerating about the state of the network take a look at these piccies - see if you can guess which ones were taken before contractors were let loose

You can tell me I'm wrong but the pics of the tidy cabs look like they show the cabs before they have any customers on them, or very few customers, and I would suspect you are trying to exaggerate a point.

In my experience using contractors is fine but they need to be properly supervised.

There's no excuse for cabinets to be in the state that you have shown whether they have been messed up by contractors or otherwise.

It's down to ntl - full stop to properly maintain their network.

Originally Posted by Pierre

You can tell me I'm wrong but the pics of the tidy cabs look like they show the cabs before they have any customers on them, or very few customers, and I would suspect you are trying to exaggerate a point.

In my experience using contractors is fine but they need to be properly supervised.

There's no excuse for cabinets to be in the state that you have shown whether they have been messed up by contractors or otherwise.

It's down to ntl - full stop to properly maintain their network.

No its not totaly down to ntl, if the contractors removed old jumpers as they removed one and drop cables when they did a repull etc there would be minimal maintainance to do, yes ntl have let it go but still the contractors still have a hell of alot to be blamed for.

I have no idea what the hell will happen if networks and service go as well

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Pierre

You can tell me I'm wrong but the pics of the tidy cabs look like they show the cabs before they have any customers on them, or very few customers, and I would suspect you are trying to exaggerate a point.

In my experience using contractors is fine but they need to be properly supervised.

There's no excuse for cabinets to be in the state that you have shown whether they have been messed up by contractors or otherwise.

It's down to ntl - full stop to properly maintain their network.

Belive me the state of the cabinets you see in those pics IS country wide, this IS because of having contractors yes, and also a policy of having zero Quality control concequently this has happened.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by sollp

Belive me the state of the cabinets you see in those pics IS country wide, this IS because of having contractors yes, and also a policy of having zero Quality control concequently this has happened.

The state of cabinets started to go down hill in Wales when, they got rid of the two guys looking after cabinet maintenance. The condition that cabinets were getting in prompted them to appoint approx four preventative maintenance technicians, there job covered all aspects of maintenance but a fair amount of time was taken by the replacement of locks and cabinet doors for damage carried out by contractors during installations.

I remember one of the service techs telling me about challenging a contractor who was using a large screwdriver to open a DP cabinet. the contractor replied "We keep asking but cant get keys" The contract company appear to be able to complete the job cheaper than ntl, and the main reason is the quality of work, lack of tools/equipment and in some cases poor cheaply paid employees.

Pay your money and take your choice, but the apparent savings for installs will result in increased service calls and costs being transferred to another department who are sorting out the mess.

I would never say every contractor has no morals or pride in his work, however they generally work for a hire and fire company under poor conditions for an employer who doesn't give a s**t about them.

PS: Didn't ntl also make most of the quality checkers redundant?

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Escapee

PS: Didn't ntl also make most of the quality checkers redundant?

This is my point, it's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Using contractors "should" not affect the state of the network as longs as:

1) They are supervised properly.
2) Regular quality audits are undertaken.
3) Monthly or even weekly progress meeting are held.
4) Proper penalties are in place for non-conformance

If ntl choose not to police their contractors they are to blame for the state of the network.

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Pierre

This is my point, it's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Using contractors "should" not affect the state of the network as longs as:

1) They are supervised properly.
2) Regular quality audits are undertaken.
3) Monthly or even weekly progress meeting are held.
4) Proper penalties are in place for non-conformance

If ntl choose not to police their contractors they are to blame for the state of the network.

Agreed

yes they got rid of the few QC people, i know for a fact the contractors in my area are reasonably payed, have all the tools test equipment provided for them and also the uniform, keys are constantly checked, they are constantly told about the things they do wrong, also when they do a good job, but still doors are left open or broken, jumpering is a joke, cable routing in cabs is a joke, the install in not done to the proper ntl spec, but hey it works at the end of it!

And yes it is NTL's fault for this

[JontyG]

Originally Posted by Pierre

You can tell me I'm wrong but the pics of the tidy cabs look like they show the cabs before they have any customers on them, or very few customers, and I would suspect you are trying to exaggerate a point..

Cab1 pic is after a cab audit (remember those?) about 3 or 4 years ago. It is presently not in the same state as cab2 or cab3 which are in a high churn/ rented accommodation area, but it looks nothing like that now.
Cab4 is near a industrial estate, so only has a few subs. Cab5 is an example of splitters being fitted instead of pulling out redundant drops.

These were used to give a contrast between how a cab should be (they all were once) and how bad some of them are.
Of course not all cabs are in the shambolic state illustrated but I could provide plenty more that are well on the way. How long before they all are?

The replies from other franchises show that this is not limited to teesside, and the guys working on the network day in day out will know the cost of this decision.

The point here is that both NTL and Telewest have a host of dedicated technicians (both installs and service) who try to take pride in the job they do. As the recent news confirms, they are not at all valued by the company, who favour contract services at the detriment to the network.

Originally Posted by JontyG

The point here is that both NTL and Telewest have a host of dedicated technicians (both installs and service) who try to take pride in the job they do. As the recent news confirms, they are not at all valued by the company.

Well said mate.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Pierre

This is my point, it's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Using contractors "should" not affect the state of the network as longs as:

1) They are supervised properly.
2) Regular quality audits are undertaken.
3) Monthly or even weekly progress meeting are held.
4) Proper penalties are in place for non-conformance

If ntl choose not to police their contractors they are to blame for the state of the network.

There is however nothing better than having people you can rely on to start with. The last company I worked for had a very small Quality Control team, in fact the new quality control manager was a little worried about the small number. The company however treated employees very well and the vast majority took great pride in their work, the ones who didn't were not around that long.

If you have people you can't rely on, the quality control people need to be a larger department. ntl in my old region used to quality check every install, now with no quality checkers and all the work going to contractors of varying quality, there is a problem.

I know they are not adding many new customers due to there being no build, but the churn rates probably mean there are quite a lot of disconnects and installs going on.

[joehill]

Yes TUPE is not a done deal.
Redeployment could easily be an option into service and the new London area manager has confirmed this possibilty though no numbres have been floated.
TUPE offers limited protection and it seems likely that at some stage the contract firm will start to try to change T&Cs

Thats why you need to stick together, join a union and organsie yourselves. BECTU has a small bargaining unit in NTL which has recognition rights. The CWU has recognition rights in Installs, service and networks. AMICUS has no recognition in any firm and has its history in engineering not communications.

It's better you were in a union than none at all. My preference would be the CWU but its up to you.

[bigcat]

The pic of cab5 looks suspiciously like the one I'm connected to (M49308).
I went with the service tech to have a look at the cab when my phone went off. The tech couldn't get a dial tone at the house, so went to the cab & lo and behold an installer had pulled the DSide out & connected someone else to it!

The amount of splitters also explains the constant freezing pix I get as well, most of them weren't even tight!

[Acropolis]

I have worked for both Telewest and NTL both inhouse and as a contractor, on installs, service and as a supervisor. I state this purely so you can see i have experience.

There is a massive difference between the way inhosue and contractors work yes, mainly down to the way contractors are treated by the cable companies, no real support is given, and stock is very hard to get hold of. We went through a stage where we couldnt get STB or SACM's at all, yet the inhouse guys had loads but we were still expected to do the installs? How? Cab keys were a constant battle to get hold of, try and we would they just wouldnt give us any, yet still expected us to do the work without causing damage, and they would frequently throw more work than we could handle at us, so you would take on more engineers then the work load would just disapear once again. I had weeks where i would be sending engineers out with 15-18 jobs each per day, then next week they would be lucky to have 3 or 4, when this is happening its impossible to organise staffing levels properly.

I can not speak for Telewest as it has been some time since i have had anything to do with their network, but as for NTL, from where i have worked mainly around the midlands area, the network is a disgrace especially around the Leicester area. The cabs are a disgrace and its impossible to find what you are looking for and spare drops, i have been to cabs where there are not enough taps for the demand by far. As for jumpering, I came accross a lot of faulty connections on E and D sides, which would cause problems with jumpering, so some engineers rather than ringing up would just pull cables, or wouldnt check to make sure a pair was dead before connecting to what they had been assigned, a lot of this was due to problems with NTL's routing dept, and when you tried to phone them it was a joke. I spent 3 hours on hold one day trying to get a pair i could use, it just want possible to speak to them on every job, or you would only get a couple done each day.

As for working for contractors, then there is a potentional to make a lot of money, depending on which company you are working for, when i was installing i would regualry do £3500 per month, ok i was doing a lot of work for that money. But the company I was working for lost the contract and everyone got TUPE'd accross to another firm and the pay structure was completely different, whereas i was making £300 a day for instance under the new scheme i would only have been £120 or so, so it wasnt worth it for me, so i stayed with the existing company and am now very glad i did as i have a brilliant job that really doesnt involve doing all that much to be honest, but is varied and very interesting.

At the end of day, it may come to something or it may not, those that have been around in the game for a while, will know that whenever a rumour like this comes out it always gets blown out of all sense very quickly, and what people are saying very rarely turns out to be true. When the rumours about the company i worked for loosing the contract started, there was uproar instantly that the company was going bust, they wouldnt be able to afford to pay the wages etc etc, and a lot of the crews downed tools and didnt come into work, hiding the vans etc as a means of expecting to be paid for their work, now i can understand that there are going to be some concerns, but that kind of behavour only makes matters worse, and all it ended up doing was getting them the sack and reported to the police. Whereas if they had listened to what they had been told then they would have been fine, the scarey thing was most of them had been through the process several times before as well, utter stupidity. I got told repeatidly i was a fool for staying with the company after they lost the contract as i would be out of work within weeks etc etc, after a couple of months they new contrators got rid of a load of them, and they all came looking for work from the origanal company, hahahaha who's the fool eh.

Listen to what is been said, dont take it all for gospel granted, but dont assume they are out to screw you over either, at the end of they day, they still need people to do the work, and without techs/service/network etc etc they have no business.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Acropolis

I have worked for both Telewest and NTL both inhouse and as a contractor, on installs, service and as a supervisor. I state this purely so you can see i have experience.

There is a massive difference between the way inhosue and contractors work yes, mainly down to the way contractors are treated by the cable companies, no real support is given, and stock is very hard to get hold of. We went through a stage where we couldnt get STB or SACM's at all, yet the inhouse guys had loads but we were still expected to do the installs? How? Cab keys were a constant battle to get hold of, try and we would they just wouldnt give us any, yet still expected us to do the work without causing damage, and they would frequently throw more work than we could handle at us, so you would take on more engineers then the work load would just disapear once again. I had weeks where i would be sending engineers out with 15-18 jobs each per day, then next week they would be lucky to have 3 or 4, when this is happening its impossible to organise staffing levels properly.

I can not speak for Telewest as it has been some time since i have had anything to do with their network, but as for NTL, from where i have worked mainly around the midlands area, the network is a disgrace especially around the Leicester area. The cabs are a disgrace and its impossible to find what you are looking for and spare drops, i have been to cabs where there are not enough taps for the demand by far. As for jumpering, I came accross a lot of faulty connections on E and D sides, which would cause problems with jumpering, so some engineers rather than ringing up would just pull cables, or wouldnt check to make sure a pair was dead before connecting to what they had been assigned, a lot of this was due to problems with NTL's routing dept, and when you tried to phone them it was a joke. I spent 3 hours on hold one day trying to get a pair i could use, it just want possible to speak to them on every job, or you would only get a couple done each day.

As for working for contractors, then there is a potentional to make a lot of money, depending on which company you are working for, when i was installing i would regualry do £3500 per month, ok i was doing a lot of work for that money. But the company I was working for lost the contract and everyone got TUPE'd accross to another firm and the pay structure was completely different, whereas i was making £300 a day for instance under the new scheme i would only have been £120 or so, so it wasnt worth it for me, so i stayed with the existing company and am now very glad i did as i have a brilliant job that really doesnt involve doing all that much to be honest, but is varied and very interesting.

At the end of day, it may come to something or it may not, those that have been around in the game for a while, will know that whenever a rumour like this comes out it always gets blown out of all sense very quickly, and what people are saying very rarely turns out to be true. When the rumours about the company i worked for loosing the contract started, there was uproar instantly that the company was going bust, they wouldnt be able to afford to pay the wages etc etc, and a lot of the crews downed tools and didnt come into work, hiding the vans etc as a means of expecting to be paid for their work, now i can understand that there are going to be some concerns, but that kind of behavour only makes matters worse, and all it ended up doing was getting them the sack and reported to the police. Whereas if they had listened to what they had been told then they would have been fine, the scarey thing was most of them had been through the process several times before as well, utter stupidity. I got told repeatidly i was a fool for staying with the company after they lost the contract as i would be out of work within weeks etc etc, after a couple of months they new contrators got rid of a load of them, and they all came looking for work from the origanal company, hahahaha who's the fool eh.

Listen to what is been said, dont take it all for gospel granted, but dont assume they are out to screw you over either, at the end of they day, they still need people to do the work, and without techs/service/network etc etc they have no business.

When I was at ntl (A long time ago now) I'm sure the contractors had to supply their own keys then later on they were able to get them from ntl stores, after all they are readily available from the cabinet makers. I recall being at the stores when some contractors were after keys, they didn't get them because they didn't have the necessary paperwork at the time. The contractors were going on about requesting them but their supervisor would not authorise it.

At the end of the day the majority of contract companies, even good ones have to cut to the bone to keep costs down. Companies like ntl issue a contract for tender and then start playing one against the other to get the cheapest deal. Most respectable companies do not take the cheapest deal, but ntl have to cut every corner to keep them in business.

I have been in a situation where I thought I wasn't going to get paid, and I held on to equipment worth a similar amount to my wages. I made sure my manager knew about it and he didn't have any problem at all, rumours about financial problems are often rubbished by companies because they know acknowledging the truth could finish them, but denying it sometimes buys a bit of time.

Many of the CWC areas taken over by ntl were a shambles, and I'm not just talking about the London areas. I had a look at quite a few cabinets around Leicester after I left ntl and was working for another company commissioning Cheetah. The cabinets in Leicester were far too small and obviously thrown together as cheaply as possible, the engineers in that area seemed to think they had a good network. There were things that impressed me about the CWC areas in general, and that was their Data network around the hubsites. It didn't appear to be thrown in as an afterthought like the orig ntl areas, where there was multiple equipment for different platforms.

However impressive it looked though, it seemed to operate very slowly.

[iSteve]

CWU is the most appropriate union for the communications industry and also by no means a 'tame' beast - when threatened they bite back.

They will also provide all members with representation and will provide FULL training and support to anyone interested in becoming a rep. They have TWO dedicated training colleges in the UK and a number of events held around the country.

As a member you will be entitled to go on many of these courses, they will provide FREE transportation, FREE lodging, FREE food and FREE advice. They have severals courses on being a rep (basic, intermediate & advanced), employment law (basic, intermediate and advanced), redundancy law, organising a union, and many more.

What's more, where the employer does NOT recognise a union (such as in NTL) and refuses you paid leave, you can take unpaid leave from NTL to take the course - protecting your holiday entitlement - and the union will COMPENSATE you for the lost pay.

I was a member for a few years while in NTL. They appointed me to the local committee so I would have direct access to my local officers, who educated me on unions and told me what I needed to know on starting and building up a union, and also paid for/sent me on a youth education course last year, and have always backed me 200%.

CWU have recognition in engineering grades within Telewest and I believe this has carried over onto relevant NTL grades after the merger.

The key to a strong workforce is ORGANISATION. Join the union, get familiar with how a successful organised union works, get all your colleagues to join and do the same. Once you know how 'the game is played' you will be in a much stronger position to know how to fight back, how to anticipate the company's next move and the best way of fighting that, and so on.

BECTU is only brought up because they had recogntion within NTL Broadcast. This in itself was simply a carry-over from the fact National Transcommunications Ltd, an old broadcasting company (what we knew as NTL Broadcast) was acquired by CableTel (what we think of as NTL now), at and AT THAT TIME this acquired company already HAD union recognition with BECTU. When CableTel renamed the whole shebang as 'NTL' this didn't mean BECTU had recognition spread across the company. And now, NTL Broadcast has now been sold off again, and no longer part of NTL.

Therefore BECTU for all intents and purposes are irrelevant to NTL again, except for where they have made already have built up members. However BECTU is a very SMALL union and does not have the strength to make a big difference in a company like NTL.

While I was part of the CWU, BECTU were considered something of a pain as they would interfere in CWU organising campaigns, jumping into bed with NTL management whenever we were building numbers within an NTL office. BECTU did not respect that we were 'present' at these offices and therefore, as they should, leave it to us to sort out - they pushed us aside to sign a deal with NTL instead.

This did not stop the CWU informing me of BECTU's activities within NTL when I joined, and asking if I'd prefer to sign up with them instead. (As the CWU prefers to play by the rules). I said no, and I'm glad I did. I now know that the CWU has the network of some 300 local branches nationwide and the contacts/knowledgebase you'll need, BECTU probably won't have a local base to you within 200 miles and so you'll feel like you're on your own with no-one within local distance to help you when you need it.

My advice - join the CWU, and email/ask to meet with your local branch officers - explain you're in NTL and that you want to organise a union - ask if you can join the local branch at the next AGM elections as I did - that will get you 'in' and from there it will be easier to stay 'connected' to the rest of the union, and you can represent your workforce inside the union. Then ask to go on courses so you can find out all you need to know to be a good rep.

If you do NOTHING and people do NOT get themselves organised, NTL engineering WILL be outsourced. If you can pull off a miracle and get the engineering workforce organised and signed up YESTERDAY, there's still time to kick up a fuss and show a determined, united front against this plan.

Good luck

---------- Post added at 10:10 ---------- Previous post was at 09:43 ----------

Also, this is an important related news item from the CWU's own website on what they are doing for the NTL/Telewest engineers:

Originally Posted by http://www.cwu.org/news.asp?step=3&nid=1372

News

19 May 2006

NTL/Telewest: The Future of Installations

In March of this year, the Union approached Telewest as to what were the plans on assimilation of the two operations. The Union took this course of action as it was clear that in the company had two distinct operational models, one predominately in-house, the other the outsourcing route.

Senior management admitted that in reviewing the two operations, they discovered a marked cost difference, with the in-house being substantially more expensive and that this had the attention of the Chief Executive and Chief Finance Officer of the company. It was forcing them to consider the outsourcing option; in response the union stated that the workforce representatives should be given the chance to examine the processes and costs, the objective being to close the gap in terms of cost. Management also accepted that unionââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s claim that the cost of quality was lower in-house, but in response they doubted that this would narrow the gap completely.

The outcome was a small team of union reps from Install and one service rep and employee forum representatives looked at the costs with the objective of throwing up ideas which would produce cost savings and provide the basis of retaining an element of in-house operations. Regrettably whilst the group worked hard, providing areas to look at, these have not lead to cost reductions of any significance according to the company.

Management have now decided to move from the informal to the formal decision making and consultation process. At this stage contrary to the spin or incompetence of local managers no decision has been taken on TUPE and outsourcing, what the company has moved to, is a position of formally announcing that if the issue of costs is not addressed, then they will proceed to the formal and final decisions to outsource. [emphasis is CWU's not mine] I draw your attention to the fourth paragraph of their internal announcement which is clear that this is not their final position.

The union will now move to the stage to consulting with the Install reps with a view to forming a team to deal with the discussions and to formulate the unionââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s policy.

We are naturally very unhappy and disappointed with the situation; our in-house members do provide a higher quality service. The union will be working very hard to retain an in-house operation and if unsuccessful to ensure the highest amount of TUPE protection for our members going forward.

Please note: CWU only have recognition in engineers grades, hence why they are only able to address issues and negotiate for these grades. CWU are unable to negotiate on behalf of other units due to lack of recognition (i.e. lack of members).