Hundreds of IBM consultants in the UK have seen their
overtime rates slashed following a review of terms and conditions
by the services giant.Union
leaders have warned that some staff at IBM Global Information
Services could be up to £6,000 a year worse off under the proposed
changes to overtime and call-out rates, which were announced
internally last month.
Staff
working in the Warwick, Manchester and Portsmouth offices of IBM's
strategic outsourcing service delivery business are understood to
be hit by the changes.
"People
are very angry," said Peter Skyte, national secretary of the Amicus
MSF union. "There have been limited negotiations and changes to
take home pay affect people's lifestyles and mortgages."
IBM
declined to comment.
Last year
union leaders accused IBM of offering its IT professionals a
miserly redundancy package, as it consulted its workforce on
hundreds of possible job losses as part of a global
restructuring.
The terms
of IBM's redundancy package for UK consultants are significantly
less generous than redundancy deals from other major IT suppliers,
leaders of the Amicus IT Professionals Association claimed.
Since
then, IBM has declined to reveal how many UK redundancies it has
made, adding that it was constantly "re-balancing" skills and
resources.