By George Blessing 175,000 British Telecom workers face the loss of job security at a stroke.
Employment in BT has been reduced by 60,000 in three years but management want to lose at least another 80,000 jobs. To do this they plan the introduction of a vicious example of the 'new management techniques' called the 'alignment/reassignment' programme.
This, in reality, is an assessment system which aims to designate nearly half of Britain's telecom workers as 'supernumary'- and thus targeted for the sack by 1997.
All BT employees will be 'rated' on a 90 point scale - a scale originally designed to assess employees for performance related pay.
Depending on their points rating staff will then be informed whether they have been 'appointed' to a job with the company, or whether they are 'supernumary' - in other words in line for redundancy. This process will take place every year. amounts to a draconian annual system of intimidation. Not only will it have the effect of putting staff permanently in fear of being put on a redundancy list, but for the employers has the added advantage of forcing workers to work harder and compete with one If this system is introduced it will not only devastate telecoms employment but effectively destroy trade unionism in BT.
A further aspect of the 'new management techniques' introduced by this programme is that of disposing with permanent employees and putting work out to contractors with cheap labour forces.
In fact BT in most departments is now understaffed; the desire for further redundancies can only be explained by BT's intention to further casualise its workforce.
This is partially to compete with the casualised, low-paid, and non-union situation of their Mercury and Cable company competitors.
The recently elected National Communications Union NEC, dominated by the Broad Left, has failed to respond adequately to this attack.
Major branches of the union have been told to co-operate with this system in return for talks and minor concessions.
The first annual AGM of the Broad Left since the election of the BL controlled NEC was attended by about 70 people. It had as its main discussion the Alignment/Reassignment process.
Speaker after speaker criticised the NEC for failing to in-struct the membership to boycott their Appraisement interviews.
The main response from NEC members was to blame the Head Office bureaucracy which is frustrating them at every turn.
However proposals to use the BL itself as a campaigning vehicle with regular publications explaining the issues were firmly resisted.
The AGM was united in supporting the NEC position in calling for an industrial action ballot if BT does not back down from selecting people for their own jobs on a performance related basis.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.52, November 13 1993, Page 5