CWU wins £5,000-plus increase in earning potential for 154 Flex FND controllers

Nearly two years of determined CWU campaigning has delivered the prospect of four-figure pre-Christmas pay rises for 154 TMDE2 graded Fibre Network Delivery (FND) controllers following Openreach’s agreement that the work they conduct is ‘complex’ rather than ‘core’.

The breakthrough, which follows persistent lobbying by the union’s Openreach national team, regional coordinators and branches – backed up by powerful explanations by individual members of the overwhelming case for their re-grading – means that every single one of the existing TMDE2 Order Controller (OC) and Jeopardy Controller (JC) workforce is now being given the opportunity to progress to a new ‘Integrated Controller’ workstream .

The CWU has long argued that there is already considerable overlap between the OC and JC functions and skillsets – meaning that,  in practice, many of the Desk Engineers in question (who allocate and help organise work for FND field engineers) are already conducting complex (TMDE3) work.

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