AFTER the bad news, comes the very bad news. To add to dancies in British Telecom in Ihe past two years, the em ployers are looking for another next twelve months.
BT's announcement last week was justified by reference to increased competition, and increased While it is true that BT profits have fallen slightly due to the recession, the company still has about 95 per cent of the British market with Mercury only on about 5 per cent. Even if no jobs were cut, BT would continue to make hundreds of millions of pounds profit.
It is not the fear of bankruptcy which motivates BT, but a fear of any slight reduction in profits for its private sharcholders, mainly big financial inBetween 1990 and 1993 BT will have shed about 57,000 jobs, or 400 a week. The re CU, has been half-hearted General secretary Tony Young says the NCU will insist on no compulsory redundancies. Such is the pressure of rising unemployment that it is very doubtful that this year's batch can be achieved voluntarily.
In any. case, voluntary te dundancies still amount to jobs lost. 'Intensive negotiations' with BT, all the NCU leadership has offer, are fhe leaderveip has leadership has OOOSUCESV conference decisions to cam parga for snor ter working hours to combat redundancies.
Tony Young and his friends be banking on a better deal from Labour. But indusspokesperson Gordon Brown says the recession 'will inevitably take its toll' on BT.
Worst of all the NCU acgeneral secretary Bill McClory savs that the recession and an imbalanced regulatory blame for job cuts. In other words. iob losses are inevitable to defend BT's mammoth With logic like that, ProTs. wòn che op kad rihback who can