Julie Elliott MP Standing up for Sunderland Central
Today in Parliament I was delighted to meet with my constituent Beth Elstob, a BT agency worker, at a CWU event to highlight the gap between salaries for permanent BT staff and agency workers.
Hundreds of people working in BT call centres in the North East, and over 2000 across the country, are on Pay Between Assignment (PBA) contracts.
These unfair contracts allow BT to pay agency staff the minimum wage and hundreds of pounds less every month than permanent staff for doing exactly the same job.
This is not about flexibility, BT are using them for people who are working for continuous periods of a number of years.
These predominantly young workers are often turned down for mortgages because their contracts are not permanent and are unable to afford to go on holidays like the permanent staff they work alongside.
This is just not right -; BT is one of the biggest and richest companies in the country so should be paying all staff a fair wage for the work they do.
It’s vital that this loophole is closed so that workers receive a fair wage for the work they do and have contracts that enable them to plan for the future.