Wrestling with relations

Some EDF meter fitters are on strike – many for the first time in their working lives. Mathew Beech reports on the usually harmonious relationship between utility workers and their employers.

The relationship between employer and employee has generally been pretty smooth in the utilities sector.

Unlike the mass walkouts seen by Royal Mail in 2009, or the disruptive strikes by London Underground workers earlier this year, industrial action by workers in the power and water sectors is rare.

Neil Robertson, chief executive of Energy & Utility Skills (EU Skills) praises the “mature attitude to unions [by the companies] and the mature attitude in unions” for this. He says: “There are a number of areas where unions and management work very closely together. Training, skills and safety are key among these, but there are many other examples.”

Kevin Coyne, national officer for energy and utilities at Unite the Union, supports this view. He says: “On the whole it’s one of the lowest instances of industrial grievances.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems, but we’ve got very sophisticated negotiation mechanisms to repair those and sort them out.”

Even “sophisticated” systems can fail on occasion, as it has done in the pay and conditions dispute currently rumbling on between Unite and EDF.

The union says EDF has failed to offer a “fair pay rise, keeping up with the rate of inflation”, nor has it ensured pay parity for meter fitters in the southeast and London.

EDF says the 2 per cent pay rise, with a one-off payment of £200, is “fair and competitive”, and that an identical offer was accepted by “the vast majority of a much larger group of employees in the same part of to  he business”.

The dispute resulted in dozens of workers joining the picket line around EDF’s offices in Bexleyheath earlier this month, and saw some meter fitters strike for the first time in their working lives, which is more than 35 years in some cases.

Utility Week joined them on the demonstration to find out what their grievances were. The strikers said they felt they should be given a pay rise that keeps up with the cost of living, and that for completing the same job as their London-based colleagues, they should receive the same pay.

Their concerns ranged further than just pay. The meter fitters were also worried about their – and their colleagues’ – futures.

“Once smart meters have been installed, come 2020 there will not be a need for fitters. They won’t need meter readers either,” said one.

“We will be out of a job,” said another. “But it’s not just about us. What about the young apprentices coming through? In seven years’ time they will be out of work.”

Those on the picket line also voiced concerns about the flexibility their younger colleagues would be forced to adopt. They accepted that smart meters would have to be fitted during evenings and at weekends, but they said they should be rewarded for doing this, both in terms of time off and remuneration.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular dispute, the big unions are more confident than some of their members that there will not be mass redundancies once the smart meter rollout is completed.

Gary Smith, national secretary of the GMB union, says: “There will be stresses and strains around job losses, but we’ve got a good track record of negotiating change.

“I don’t think the technological change is going to cause a huge problem in terms of industrial relations problems.”

Unite’s Coyne agrees that it is not a foregone conclusion that it will all end badly. He says that the age profile of meter engineers is towards the mid-50s, and with the rollout scheduled to last seven years, it could turn out to be a “win-win” situation where redundancies do not have to be made.

“It is an opportunity to retain and put people in new positions, and with higher skills,” he says. “We don’t have to make any redundancies at the end of it. We can manage it naturally.

“We can end up with a win-win with a much better qualified and skilled workforce that stays in the industry.”

Retaining those in the younger age group of meter fitters is something Unite’s Robertson is keen to see. In fact, retaining youth is an issue across the sector.

He acknowledges that “there may be jobs lost at the margins”, but he is positive about the future for those working in the industry already because “we’ve got massive skills shortages, so I don’t think anybody in the industry needs to be worried about this”.

Coupled with this, he adds that jobs in the industry will become “even broader and interesting and more exciting than they are now”.

Robertson says this additional breadth for employees has been thought of and new courses and qualifications have been designed accordingly to allow employees to be able to cover multiple roles, and increase the opportunities for them to be redeployed once specific jobs – such as the smart meter rollout – have been completed.

He says: “It used to be you were a cable jointer or a smart meter fitter, but actually there will be increasing interchangeability – within sectors like power or gas, but also between sectors.

“We will see more common engineering.”

Coyne highlights the major role that call centre staff play in the modern energy company, a fact that was thrown into stark relief last week when Eon UK was fined £12 million by Ofgem for mis-selling.

He said: “That will put additional pressure and stress on the staff who are in those customer-focused jobs.”

EU Skills’ Robertson also praises the role call centre staff play, and states that a new initiative – set to be launched in early June – will treble the amount of training they, and other employees, receive helping to rebuild trust between customers and the energy companies.

However, the customer service line between the call centre staff and the meter engineers is disappearing – and the unions and energy companies are responding to this challenge by providing additional training to ensure the meter engineers are able to explain and guide customers through the smart revolution – before moving into new roles themselves.