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The CWU is demanding the full co-operation of management at Vertex's Contact Birmingham call centre to ensure that a catastrophic catalogue of failures following the shambolic introduction of a new payroll system can never recur.

The debacle, which followed on from the company's decision to off-shore human resources to India to cut costs, was that some staff working on Birmingham City Council contract were left virtually penniless when their wages failed to materialise in May.

Many others had their basic salaries or overtime paid incorrectly or paid short – but,  adding insult to injury, the failure was compounded by an astonishing breakdown in company communications as the full scale of the problem emerged.

Blasting both the bosses' failure to have put any contingency plans lest the new payroll system failed, and a slow and inadequate response to make sure staff did not individually suffer as a result, lead rep Chrissie Smith of Birmingham, Black Country & Worcester branch, cited the case of one employee who was forced to live on toast having not received any wages for seven weeks.

"The company knew and were even paying taxi fares to get him too and from work - but no offers had been made to fund his grocery or utility bills. How did they think he was managing if he hadn't even the money to cover his travel expenses?" Chrissie asked CWU Telecoms Industry Conference delegates in moving her emergency motion for a joint investigation into what went wrong.

"These customer advisers earn an average of £13,500 per annum and already struggle to make ends meet. People have been missing mortgage and direct debit payments, and management didn't even ask them how they would cope."

As the full scale of the problem became apparent on May 15 local CWU reps sought meetings with management to no avail. Recognising that some individuals were entering serious hardship, Chrissie - a former CWU recruiter of the year - began drawing money out of her own bank account to ensure that they could at least cover the basics.

Subsequently she managed to broker an agreement with management that any bank charges incurred by members as a result of the debacle would be covered by the company.

"Word spread across the call centre and people who weren't in the union are now joining in their droves  so what happened was certainly good for recruitment, even though I'd have preferred it hadn't happened in those circumstances," Chrissie told the Voice.

"It made people see what a difference the CWU can make because if we hadn't been there I really don't know what would have happened."

Staff have now handed a petition to management urging senior management of Vertex - which was sold by United Utilities to private equity company Oakhill last year - to set in place measures to ensure that staff are never placed in a similar situation again.

National officer with responsibility for members in Vertex, Sally Bridge, concluded: "There is a serious industrial relations issue here, which is extremely unfortunate because up until this has been a  company with which we've been able to work very well."



• On Friday June 20  a full and frank exchange about the way the payroll drama had been allowed to  turn into a full-blown crisis took place between Vertex management and the CWU at a special 'drains up' meeting to establish what went wrong and to set in place measures that will prevent a recurrence.