BEIS committee calls in Centrica over contract disputes

Centrica’s chief executive is being hauled in front of a select committee to be grilled on the company’s controversial “fire and rehire” proposals.

Chris O’Shea is due to appear next Tuesday (2 February) at an evidence session of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee examining the impact of coronavirus on the labour market. Also giving evidence will be Justin Bowden, national secretary of the GMB union, which has called a series of rolling one-day strikes at the company.

The walkouts, the final two of which are scheduled to take place on Friday and Monday, have been called to protest against a major restructuring of the British Gas owner, which involves 5,000 job cuts.

As part of the restructure, Centrica wants to reduce 80 different types of employee contracts, containing 7,000 variations of terms and conditions, to four standard contracts across the company.

The company also issued HR1 and S.188 notices in July, which allow it, in a “last resort”, to terminate workers’ contracts and issue new ones with updated terms and conditions.

As well as “fire and rehire” tactics, the BEIS committee session is due to examine unemployment, mass redundancies, workers’ rights and employment conditions.

Darren Jones, chair of the BEIS committee said: “There is no doubt that many businesses have faced difficult trading conditions, but concerns have been raised that some employers are resorting to tactics such as ‘fire and rehire’ and seeking to downgrade pay and workers’ terms during the pandemic.”

The GMB claims this month’s strikes have created a backlog of 200,000 boiler service visits. A figure Centrica disputes.

Justin Bowden, GMB national secretary, questioned why the law allows British Gas to “invent” a crisis in order to cut hourly rates 15 per cent lower than currently agreed and other adverse changes to field engineers’ conditions via the ‘fire and rehire’ mechanism.

He said: “There are serious questions as to why the British Gas board went along with this wishful thinking that union members would acquiesce to this treatment and loss.

“Mr O’Shea provoked an inevitable strike and the disruption has led to appalling service for customers.

“The numbers awaiting service are growing as more strikes are planned and the only the only way to end the dispute is to take fire and rehire off the table.

“We look forward to the select committee seeing what fire and rehire means in practice – in our view it has no place in a modern industrial framework and should be outlawed.”