London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

‘A kick in the teeth’: British Gas engineers face losing their jobs or longer working hours

‘A kick in the teeth’: British Gas engineers face losing their jobs or longer working hours

Bitter ‘fire and rehire’ battle as hundreds of staff bear the brunt of firm’s commercial decline
Hundreds of engineers could be dismissed from the country’s biggest energy supplier by the end of the week as a bitter nine-month battle in the UK’s latest “fire and rehire” debacle reaches its climax.

The standoff between British Gas executives and trade union representatives at GMB will come to a head on 1 April, when scores of the engineers responsible for servicing and repairing office and home boilers will be forced to accept longer working hours or lose their jobs entirely.

“For the last nine months it has been the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. The pressure we’re under is terrible,” says one veteran British Gas engineer. Chris, 51, has worked for the company since 1987 but asked not to be named in full because he may be forced to accept the new terms and remain at the company to support his family.

“Honestly, it’s made me ill. It’s made everybody ill. We just can’t understand how badly we’ve been treated – why?”

The tougher terms affect the entire 20,000 strong British Gas workforce, but its 7,500 service engineers – who carry out repairs for 3.6m customers who use British Gas for servicing their machines – fear they will take a disproportionate toll on their lives and livelihoods. British Gas claims that the percentage which have accepted the changes are in “the high 90s” – leaving up to 1,000 to face a stark choice in the days ahead.

“A kick in the teeth is probably the best way to put it,” says Ciara Arrowsmith, 37, who resigned from British Gas in protest last month after 13 years as a service and repair engineer in Sunderland. “I was always very loyal to the company, but I felt that what they were doing was immoral,” she says.

British Gas set out the fire and rehire plans last summer as part of a formal consultation process with trade unions. The company said it hoped to “streamline” its employment contracts, and increase productivity, to help rescue the business from the risk of financial ruin. Trade unions said the plan amounted to “bullying” by threatening to “set fire to jobs, terms and conditions”.

“It just became a really toxic atmosphere. I felt completely betrayed and it wasn’t good for my mental health. I had to go on to medication, but now I’m off,” says Arrowsmith. “It was just the uncertainty of what it was going to mean for the future because I’ve got two young children. There are loads of people with young kids, with carer responsibilities. This strike was not about money, it was about time.”

Under the new terms, full-time engineers would be required to work an extra three hours a week, 40 hours in total, and would not be paid a higher rate to work when required on weekends and public holidays.

“It’s a sad state of affairs,” says another British Gas engineer, wary of using his full name. Paul, 45, has worked for British Gas in the London area since the early 1990s. He reluctantly accepted the company’s new terms last week (“two kids, big mortgage”) but has continued to picket with union members to protest the company’s heavy handed threats.

“Most engineers have been with the company for a minimum of 10 years, going up to 40 years. We all have British Gas ingrained in us. If you cut us in half, you can read British Gas right the way through,” he says.

Before the dispute erupted, many engineers had continued to fix home boilers and heating systems through the first wave of the pandemic, in full PPE, and had half-thought the company might “give us a pat on the back for that, that we might get a bonus”, says Paul. “Then you find out that behind the scenes they have been plotting to effectively rip up our contracts.”

He blames the company for allowing inefficiency to creep in, and expecting frontline engineers to bear the brunt of the decade-long commercial decline, which has sunk profits to record lows.

“This is certainly not a position anyone wants to be in,” says Chris O’Shea, chief executive of Centrica, parent company of British Gas. “How did we get here? Our business has been declining for a number of years. We’ve lost a million customers in the last 10 years. Our productivity has declined substantially.”

The group’s full-year earnings tumbled by more than a third to an all-time low of £80m last year, a fraction of the supplier’s record-high annual profits of £742m reported 10 years ago, before a steady decline which toppled its parent company from the FTSE 100.

The decline of British Gas, once a jewel in the crown of Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation agenda, has accelerated as an army of nimble energy supply start-ups increased their market share by offering rock-bottom deals. Meanwhile British Gas boiler repairs and servicing have been eroded by a fleet of local “white van” engineers and repair experts, who can also afford to undercut British Gas rates.

“Our costs are between one-third and one-half higher than the person with a white van, and that is an unsustainable position,” says O’Shea. “Without change we would continue to decline. So I took the decision to engage with all four of our trade unions – Unite, Unison, Prospect and GMB – to discuss this and seek a negotiated settlement. And we managed to achieve one with all but the GMB. It’s deeply regrettable. But it’s about the long-term sustainability of our business,” he says.

“We’ve tried as hard as we can to be fair. The vast majority are with us. There’s still time for everyone to join us too. But everyone’s got their own choice, and I feel strongly that everyone has to make the right decision for them and their families,” O’Shea says.

For workers at British Gas, faced with a choice between working for less and unemployment, there are less than three days left to decide.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×