If you’re with British Gas, you need to read this right now

British Gas van


Support us and go ad-free

Thousands of British Gas staff are waking up today without a job simply for refusing to sign away their rights. The company told workers to accept new contracts or face unemployment. Despite months of negotiations, British Gas is firing them anyway.

If you’re a customer, you can actually make a stand with these workers that matters. You can switch suppliers today and cite their hostile working conditions as the cause. If you’re not a customer, you can speak to your friends who are.

 

Fire and rehire

British Gas is running a ‘fire and rehire’ heist. This is where a company fires employees to avoid meeting the terms of their contracts and rehires them on a new, worse contract. After seeing its profits drop by “more than a third“, British Gas is culling staff and imposing worse conditions for its engineers. The problem is the heating part of the business remains profitable. So it feels like rank and file workers are paying the price for mistakes made by people with far greater salaries.

As engineer Daniel Caie wrote in the Tribune in March:

It’s important to stress the depth of service within British Gas. I’ve been with the company for nearly 10 years now – and I am still the joint-newest member of my local team. Countless engineers would be able to say that they joined after leaving school and worked for the company all the way to retirement.

One look at the LinkedIn of our CEO shows that he has worked for six companies in 20 years. Engineers who have given their working lives to the business have a healthy sense of reservation about someone who is unlikely to hang around to see the long-term damage wrought by fire and rehire.

Related articles

Read on...

Support us and go ad-free

Caie and his fellow engineers continued to hold out. They fought for a solid year. But today, Caie took to Twitter to say goodbye to the company:

And he was far from alone:

This time, you can do something

Unlike much of the bad news at the moment, you can actually do something about this. GMB Union and the employees are asking for your solidarity. You can call or email British Gas right now, and you can switch suppliers. You can tell them that you won’t support a company that treats long-serving, loyal staff this way:

Thousands of others are taking action, and together we can stand up for working people everywhere.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons – AnnaSmith1986

Support us and go ad-free

We need your help to keep speaking the truth

Every story that you have come to us with; each injustice you have asked us to investigate; every campaign we have fought; each of your unheard voices we amplified; we do this for you. We are making a difference on your behalf.

Our fight is your fight. You’ve supported our collective struggle every time you gave us a like; and every time you shared our work across social media. Now we need you to support us with a monthly donation.

We have published nearly 2,000 articles and over 50 films in 2021. And we want to do this and more in 2022 but we don’t have enough money to go on at this pace. So, if you value our work and want us to continue then please join us and be part of The Canary family.

In return, you get:

* Advert free reading experience
* Quarterly group video call with the Editor-in-Chief
* Behind the scenes monthly e-newsletter
* 20% discount in our shop

Almost all of our spending goes to the people who make The Canary’s content. So your contribution directly supports our writers and enables us to continue to do what we do: speaking truth, powered by you. We have weathered many attempts to shut us down and silence our vital opposition to an increasingly fascist government and right-wing mainstream media.

With your help we can continue:

* Holding political and state power to account
* Advocating for the people the system marginalises
* Being a media outlet that upholds the highest standards
* Campaigning on the issues others won’t
* Putting your lives central to everything we do

We are a drop of truth in an ocean of deceit. But we can’t do this without your support. So please, can you help us continue the fight?

The Canary Support us
  • Show Comments

    2. Well now British Gas…This is war. I’m going to take you to court myself, for demanding money from me without fixing my heating. Disabled lady has had enough. I’m in Unite, lets see what I can do by chatting to GMB. You deserve this British Gas.

      Report comment

    3. British Gas has two problems. One, as Daniel said, is that its senior management has very little experience of energy supply. They come from banks and telecom companies and don’t understand that energy is a public service. But the other problem is that so many customers have switched away from British Gas to loss-leading new entrants into the market to take advantage of cheap introductory offers, it is almost impossible for long-established companies like BG to compete. Switching away from them to punish them will only result in more cost cutting and more job losses.

      Report comment

    Leave a Reply

    Join the conversation

    Please read our comment moderation policy here.

Related articles