BT boss Jansen luggage £1.8m bonus as group plans to slash workforce
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T has revealed its boss took residence a £1.8 million bonus final yr because the telecoms large plans to shed as much as 55,000 jobs by the tip of the last decade.
Philip Jansen, the group’s chief govt, secured the annual bonus regardless of the agency’s sweeping cost-cutting plans elevating the alarm amongst unions.
He bagged the £1.8 million in money and share awards, on high of his £1.3 million fastened pay, taking his whole pay packet for the newest monetary yr to £3.1 million.
It was solely a slight discount on the £3.35 million the boss took residence final yr.
Executive administrators can get an annual bonus value as much as double their base wage, based totally upon BT’s monetary efficiency.
However, BT noticed its pre-tax revenue slide by 12% to £1.7 billion over the previous yr, and a slight dip in revenues.
Meanwhile, BT mentioned Mr Jansen has “volunteered to waive any salary increases” past the present monetary yr. His £1.1 million base wage was as a consequence of be renewed this yr after being fastened since 2019.
It comes because the group, which additionally owns cellular networks EE and Plusnet, and full-fibre, broadband community Openreach, unveiled drastic plans to reshape the enterprise.
It mentioned final month it desires to depend on a a lot smaller workforce and diminished value base, and to automate some processes like buyer help.
BT has invested billions in bringing its full-fibre broadband to properties throughout Britain.
But as soon as this venture is full, it is not going to want as many engineers to construct and preserve the community, the corporate mentioned.
This implies that about 15,000 jobs can be shed when funding within the new infrastructure begins to taper off, and greater than 10,000 will disappear because the group appears to be like to cease operating double networks like 3G and 4G.
Furthermore, about 10,000 jobs are set to get replaced by synthetic intelligence (AI) and automatic providers, resulting in some alarm over the dimensions of the job cuts.
The union Prospect, which says it represents 1000’s of managers at BT, mentioned it was “deeply concerned by the scale” of the job cuts.
John Ferrett, its nationwide secretary, mentioned: “Announcing such a huge reduction in this way will be very unsettling for workers who did so much to keep the country connected during the pandemic.”
He mentioned the union had demanded an pressing assembly with Mr Jansen over the plans.
Similarly, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) mentioned that the completion of the fibre infrastructure was “always going to result in less labour costs for the company in the coming years”.
But it added: “However, we have made it categorically clear to BT that we want to retain as many direct labour jobs as possible and that any reduction should come from sub-contractors in the first instance and natural attrition.”
The CWU additionally demanded to “be in the room” when the organisational adjustments are mentioned.