by Derek Kotz
Industrial Reporter

MORE than 7,500 British Gas engineers and call-centre staff kicked off five days of strike action today, with workers “solidly” respecting socially distanced picket lines across Britain.

GMB said that its members, who last month voted to strike by a nine-to-one margin, had been provoked into action by the company’s threat to fire and rehire workers on inferior pay and conditions.

“GMB members from Land’s End to John O’Groats have stayed home, stayed safe and supported the first national gas strike in a decade,” said national secretary Justin Bowden.

“The months and months of fire-and-rehire pay-cut threats from British Gas chief executive Chris O’Shea have provoked thousands of engineers and call-centre staff to strike, the only option left to them by a business that made £901 million operating profit yet still plans to sack them because they won’t accept the scale of cuts it demands.”

The union emphasised that arrangements were in place to ensure that emergencies and problems for households with vulnerable people would be dealt with.

British Gas owner Centrica claimed that pay cuts were needed to “protect jobs” and that it had done “everything” it could to avoid industrial action.

But the union urged members of the public to ask why a company whose UK domestic-heating arm alone made an operating profit of £229m in the first six months of last year — up 27 per cent on 2019 — should be trying to force through pay cuts “in the depths of winter.”

GMB has called on the Centrica board to “rein in” Mr O’Shea, whose pay package is worth almost £800,000 this year, 20 times the basic earnings of an experienced British Gas engineer.