The Payment for 100,000 staff frozen by BT

BT, putting the blame on the “tough economic climate”, has frozen the pay of 100,000 of its staff, including Livingstone, its chief executive. This move by the UK telecom giant, comes as the latest blow to the British workers. The company has been facing a potential shortfall of multiple billion pounds in its GBP 33 billion pension fund owing to the global recession.

The information regarding the freezing of payment was passed on to the workers by BT management through a series of meetings conducted in the early hours of Thursday. The two main workers' organisations, namely Connect and Communication Workers Union (CWU) who together represent the lion's share of BT's staff, were also contacted by the company.

The company, in a message to its employees said that the decision was not taken lightly by the company, for they had carefully taken into account the present economic conditions, the pressures faced by the business, the Retail Price Index of the UK, and finally had come into the present conclusion, which they thought was the right thing.

Meanwhile, the union leaders virtually blasted the decision of BT, saying that a pay freeze was wholly unacceptable. The deputy general secretary of the CWU, Andy Kerr who spoke for the workers association added that a freeze of pay, at a time when BT was going on making considerable profits, was nothing less than an insult to the staff. He also said that they will be contemplating on their formal response to the company's imposition by early next week.

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