HP faces a two day UK strike

THE PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL SERVICES UNION (PCS) began a two-day strike today over pay conditions and job security at HP Enterprise Services in the North East.

According to the PCS, its members voted for a short strike and a campaign for longer strike action. The union received 92 per cent backing to go ahead with a 48-hour strike and 78 per cent support for long term strike action.

HP and PCS have tried to nail down an agreement since 22 January but have failed to resolve the dispute, even with the help of the independent public body ACAS chairing the meetings. PCS members claim HP's management team hasn't made "sufficient movement" to come to an agreement.

HP's UK team responded today with the statement, "We are disappointed to confirm that a number of employees have voted in favour of local industrial action on Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th March. An agreement was reached with the PCS, negotiating team, brokered through ACAS on 22nd February, but this was subsequently rejected by the union's membership. In cooperation with our clients we have put together a plan to mitigate the impact of the two day action. This will include reducing non-urgent project work and moving resources to ensure all critical work is prioritised. We will continue to maintain a dialogue with the union in an attempt to avoid any further form of action."

The problem for HP is that its Enterprise Services division is mainly a collection of highly annoyed ex-employees of Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which HP acquired in 2008 for billions of pounds. HP re-badged the EDS team as the HP Enterprise Services division but there has been nothing but strife ever since HP took the helm.

We reported in August of last year that HP had axed some EDS salaries by half, primarily because EDS staff were being paid more than those in HP doing the same jobs.

We also reported in October, 2009 that HP was facing a potential strike over trade union Unite's vote among its members working as HP engineers and support specialists.

PCS claims that most of its members leading this strike are former EDS employees who are "deeply unhappy at the way they are being treated by the new employers." µ