The GWU said this evening that is is prepared to order immediate industrial action after GO plc informed it that it plans to reduce its workforce through redundancies.

The union said it was not prepared to accept any dismissals since this would violate the collective agreement, and especially since the company had been going through a restructuring process for the past two years which had already reduced the workforce.

GO said it had started talks with the union on reducing staff in an effort to ensure its long-term competitiveness. It did not say by how much the workforce will be reduced.

GO said that as a result of its restructuring it had streamlined a number of processes and there were excess workers. As part of the restructuring, the workers had been offered generous early retirement schemes, which brought the headcount down and had a considerable impact on the company’s costs.

However, with ongoing regulatory pressure across the EU to reduce tariffs and with technology changing the way in which people used telephones, television and broadband, the company expected considerable pressure to reduce costs even further if it was to remain competitive, especially since it planned to spend €100 million over the coming six years to be able to offer its customers the innovations and efficiency that they expected

Any changes would be made in a way to ensure that they had no impact on the high levels of service that customers expected, GO said.

“GO fully appreciates that any reduction in headcount affects entire households and we have set up a team within GO to work with each and every person that leaves the company to ease the transition and ensure that they are assisted in every way,” chief executive officer David Kay said.

GWU section secretary Andrew Mizzi said a worker who had been with the company since 1978 had already been laid off, “not in accordance with the law”. Moreover, although the company indicated it only wanted to sack about 30 people for the time being, he suspected the figure could increase over the next few months.