BY 5048 (57%) to 3776 (43%) London BT engineers voted against taking one day strike action in protest at the introduction of contractors into the London local network. The turnout was 47%, quite high for a postal ballot.
This means BT now has a green light to continue its policy of substituting contract labour for direct labour on all divisions.
In order to head off the strike threat BT has had to pledge the extension of its policy of no compulsory redundancies during 1994/5, to limit the number of contractors to 150 this year out of a London workforce of 19,000), to find permanent posts for the 1000+ redeployees who are currently without them, and to "review" the use of contractors later this year.
Promises
These promises may well prove worthless, but the London branches will be campaigning to hold management to them.
A serious assessment of the defeat has started in the union. Debate has centred on the isolation experienced by external staff who go straight to their first job from home and who only meet their workmates at the monthly management Team Briefings.
This is undoubtedly true, but in fact some of the best votes came from branches with mainly external members.
There are no surpluses of staff on this division and some are working high levels of overtime. They are more confident than colleagues on other divisions which have declared staff surpluses.
In fact the main problem area was on other divisions where membership had suffered from large scale redeployment.
Although the fight was about getting these staff redeployed onto external work in place of the contractors, they did not feel confiden, and were con-. cerned by the threat of a management lockout as occurred in 1987.
The main responsibility for this situation lies with the Broad Left (BL) NEC who incorrectly negotiated the Identification of Redeployees Agreement in November 1993 which allowed these massive redeployments to take place on an appraisement related basis.
The result is a defeat for the powerful London branches, the base of the NCU BL.
We will have to fight hard for the reelection of the BL NEC despite its retreats and wasted opportunities of its year in office.
We are also faced with a difficult Sign Up campaign to retain memnerd