BT Global bosses are being robustly challenged over plans to make 16 redundancies in the division’s Digital Delivery Service Organisation (DDSO) and a further five in its Commercial unit – all amid intensifying CWU demands for clarity on the future of the Conferencing operation in Shrewsbury.

Members from all three work areas told of fears for their futures and mounting anger at management decisions apparently driven by a virulent offshoring agenda in a special online meeting that just preceded a significant escalation of the union’s Count Me In campaign of resistance.

Amongst those on the call was a redeployee who is now facing compulsory redundancy despite the fact that only in November he was declared ‘surplus’ to a small team that is now so overstretched that work he could easily conduct is on the verge of being offshored to Hungary.

The single largest group of members on the Zoom call, however, were from Global’s Conferencing unit in Shrewsbury where long-standing fears about the future of the site are now being exacerbated by a sense that it is being deliberately run down, with work gradually being shifted to Hungary.

“We aren’t being told a damn thing and not even our managers know what’s going on,” lamented one member. Another added: “All we can see is slowly things are shifting to Hungary. They’re taking on people there even though work is slow here, and they seem to be getting all the promotions and projects.”

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