Commentary: Generous savings at BT
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Shareholders in BT might agree with Peter Archer, the director of employee relations, when he said the company's redundancy pay-offs were too generous. Some 16,000 more people volunteered for redundancy than were needed.
But this may say as much about working for BT as about the size of the package. For many BT employees, the past few years have been extremely unpleasant, with the company under intermittent fire from regulators, politicians and the public alike. The return fire from BT's bosses has been unimpressive.
The workforce has fallen from 240,000 on privatisation to about 210,000 now. Further cuts are planned, taking numbers employed down to about 135,000 by 1995.
Employees could see that if they did not volunteer now on attractive terms - three times salary - they would be volunteered sooner or later - probably on less generous terms.
BT employees may be too optimistic about their ability to find other work. With three years' money in the bank they believe they can afford to wait. Engineers and technicians are still in demand, but directory inquiry operators and others will find it hard to get another job. Many of their former colleagues who were made redundant in earlier programmes are still looking for jobs, long after their redundancy money ran out.
The company and its shareholders have little to regret. The company stands to make huge savings from its pounds 1bn redundancy programme, allowing it to keep increasing its dividend despite regulatory pressure on prices.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments