Bt Won’t Budge Over Pay Hike For Manager Grade Employees

Emotions are running high at BT over the Brit telco’s refusal to “improve their derisory and insulting” pay offer to manager grade staff, according to John Ferrett, national secretary at union Prospect.

As revealed by The Register at the end of last month, the union criticized the former state owned network operator for giving nearly two-thirds of the managers at BT – understood to be some 15,000 + employees – a 1.28 percent hike in compensation from April, something that was rejected. The rest were denied a pay rise, Prospect complained.

BT’s “manager grade” includes all employees from “second line support” and upwards.

This protest was made public after BT increased dividends to shareholders by two percent, equating to an estimated £800 million ($1 billion).

In a letter to Prospect members working at BT, Ferrett said he’d had a second meeting with the business, this time with incoming HR director Alison Wilcox as proposed by BT. He said: “Your pay team approached it in good faith, believing that the company were prepared to improve their derisory and insulting offer to managers.

“Unfortunately, despite both the willingness of your pay team to meet the company at short notice and their best efforts at exposing the unfairness of the offer, the company have now signaled they are not prepared to improve the offer they made to Prospect back in March.”

BT Group’s wider workforce, some of whom are represented by the CWU, had voted to approve a 1 percent pay rise plus a £1,000 lump sum (both consolidated and pensionable) in March, and the increases kicked off from April 1, 2025.

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Ferrett claimed that, far from seeking to deal with managers concerns over pay, BT is appearing to “exacerbate them.”

“For example, the commitment to deal with pay compression, between managers and the team members they managed, highlights the unfair and disproportionate approach the company has chosen to take with manager pay.”

BT, he said, has indicated the “collective bargaining process is at an end” but Prospect is refusing to accept this. Instead it wants to “negotiate and find a way to resolve the dispute,” including holding a conversation with CEO Allison Kirkby at the scheduled half year meeting.

Ferrett thundered:

“Members will find it deeply frustrating that the company are refusing to improve an offer that on average is worth a third of that offered to team members, but is also worth nothing at all to nearly five thousand managers and professionals. You will be understandably angry that the company have offered no defense for this grossly unfair approach, other than managers alone must bear the brunt of a drive for cost savings.

“This is a deeply disrespectful way to treat those who have been instrumental in delivering the changes to the business that have been demanded by the Chief Executive and the Board. To tell most managers and professionals that their reward for this is a real terms cut in pay is a disgrace and shameful for a company that proclaims partnership and respect in its public statements.”

He warned “the union will be ramping our campaign.”

BT obviously wants to avoid a repeat of the previous debacle, when tens of thousands of workers that are members of the CWU downed tools in July 2021. In the first national strike since 1987, they went on multiple strikes to protest over the pay offer they received in April that year. That dispute was settled in December 2021.

A BT spokesperson told us: “The pay proposal presented to Prospect allocated the budget we had available in the fairest way possible, awarding a 3 percent increase to managers whose pay is least competitive compared to the market range for their role, with lower awards for those who are more competitively paid versus the market. We use independent third-party pay data to ensure our market ranges are up to date, and review this on an annual basis.”

Given the number of Prospect members at BT, any strike action might be less impactful but still a thorn in the comms giant’s side.

It comes as BT works through its multi-year plan to shed up to 55,000 jobs, or 42 percent of the workforce, between 2023 and 2030. BT’s rationale is that the fiber network build will be largely done by 2030 and AI will help it reduce headcount in the call centers.

BT reported revenue of £20.4 billion ($27.3 billion) in the year ended March 31, 2025, down 2 percent on the prior 12-month financial period, and upped profits to £1.054 billion ($1.4 billion) from £855 million ($1.15 billion). ®

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