Engineers signalled their intention yesterday to fight back against an anti-union barrage by Virgin Media since it was taken over by Liberty Global.

Communications union CWU had been making steady progress with the company until November 2012 when union recognition for field engineers was withdrawn.

CWU telecom and financial services executive member John East claimed there had since been an outsourcing of planning work, closure of offices, redundancies and a ramping up of disciplinaries based on unrealistic performance expectations.

“We as a union have a choice — walk away and leave members to Virgin Media’s tender mercy or support them, which is what we will do,” said Mr East.

“When workers need help we must ensure they get help.”

South East Central branch’s Chris Power told of an increase in discipline and performance cases. 

“We have started a six month cyclical campaign to show we are there — the pressure on the engineers is high at the moment,” he said.

Another motion indicated the aggressive anti-union attitude prevalent at BSkyB, with Ian Tomlinson of Manchester Combined branch revealing how the company dismissed workplace reps.

South London, Surrey and North Hampshire branch’s Steve Browett warned of a future danger of BSkyB coming together with Vodafone to create a big anti-union company committed to a race to the bottom in working conditions.

The CWU annual conference committed to establish a branch-based campaign committee for Sky, with representation from all branches involved.

It would co-ordinate recruitment and organisation in the media firm.

The grim picture of industrial relations was completed when delegates debated the situation at mobile phone firm EE, where agreements seem to have been signed but are not being acted on.

Mr East told of an agreement whereby the union can display its literature in the company buildings, but two delegates then testified that they had not seen any such literature in areas in their call centres.