Last week, Labour announced a major policy to invest in and roll out a publicly owned full fibre broadband network to every address across the country within a decade.

This is a significant announcement which would deliver major benefits for CWU members working in the industry if Labour is elected and we have been working closely with Labour to shape the proposals in recent weeks. In terms of detail, Labour would bring Openreach and other parts of BT that are relevant to broadband – including parts of BT Technology, BT Consumer and BT Enterprise – into public ownership to form a new public body, British Broadband.

The CWU have secured a number of important commitments for our members who would be affected by this:

they would TUPE over with a guarantee on all terms and conditions;all pensions would be safeguarded or improved, with a commitment to maintain the Crown guarantee on the BTPS;the use of agency work to undercut permanent staff would end, with contracted workers being insourced;health and safety standards would be improved through engagement with frontline staff;our existing industrial agreements would be honoured, meaning the threat of compulsory redundancy would be removed;collective bargaining would be at the heart of decision-making and we would make positive harmonisation of terms and conditions a priority;employee shareholdings would be dealt with under TUPE and no-one will be worse off; andthere would be massive investment in the organisation with profits being kept and re-invested in it.

For the full briefing see LTB 661/19