CENTRICA, the company which owns British Gas, made £700 million profit last year. It doled out fat bonuses to directors and handsome dividends to shareholders.

But it wasn’t enough for the privateers, so they’re trying to introduce new contracts to make their gas engineers and office staff work more hours for lower wages.

The workers have been told that if they don’t sign the new contracts they will be sacked and given their jobs back on the new contracts anyway, costing them around £2,500 a year in lost wages.

The tactic is called “fire and rehire” — the bosses’ jargon for another way to steal money from workers.

The 7,000 British Gas workers are a tiny fraction of Britain’s 23 million-strong workforce facing similar attacks.

A survey by the Trade Union Congress estimates that almost 10 per cent of the workforce is being “fired and rehired.” That’s more than two million workers.

Research group the Institute of Employment Rights calls it “an epidemic.”

But workers are fighting back. The 7,000 skilled gas engineers and office staff, members of union GMB, are staging nationwide strikes in defiance of the employers’ “fire and rehire” greed.

On a smaller scale bus operating company Go North West in Manchester is imposing new contracts on 400 workers at the company’s Queens Road depot. They too were told that if they did not accept pay cuts and worsened conditions they would be “fired and rehired” on new contracts anyway.

The 400 bus workers are on indefinite strike, picketing the bus depot daily.

The dangers posed by the contagious spread of the “fire and rehire” tactic by employers to cut wages, increase working hours, worsen working conditions and attack pensions should not be underestimated.

The North West region of the Trade Union Congress has recognised the danger, and has issued a rallying call to unions and workers across the region to support the 400 striking bus workers.

The Manchester dispute may seem to be local. It’s not. Go North West is part of the Go Ahead group, one of the five big companies which run privatised bus services in Britain. The company also runs 30 per cent of Britain’s heavily subsidised privatised rail services.

The imposition of “fire and rehire” on the 400 Manchester workers is merely a toe in the water — an experiment to see if Go Ahead can get away with it.

You can bet a pound to a penny that if it does, the policy will be rolled out across all its public transport operations.

And the other big public transport companies — such as Arriva — will be keeping a greedy eye on the Go North West dispute with a view to implementing “fire and rehire” themselves if the 400 strikers, who are members of union Unite, lose.

Many more employers recognise the potential of “fire and rehire” to fatten profits, increase directors’ bonuses and boost the shareholders’ unearned dividends, at the expense of workers’ wages.

At Banbury in Oxfordshire, coffee merchant Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JBS) has announced plans to “fire and rehire” its 300 workers on lower wages.

If it succeeds the new contracts will cost the workers £3,500 a year.

JBS, which is owned by a Dutch company, produces Tassimo, Kenco and L’or coffee brands. It is also attacking the workers’ pension scheme.

The coffee workers are members of Unite, and their union has branded the employers’ action “immoral.”

Unite said that after postponing its attack on wages because of the coronavirus pandemic, “the bosses have now come back with a vengeance.”

The union says that if the company’s “fire and rehire” tactic succeeds, living standards of the workers and their families will be pummelled, as will the wider regional economy.

Unite national officer for the food and drink industry Joe Clarke said: “This is the shabby way the company has repaid the loyalty of its workers who kept production running smoothly through the worst of times.

“They should be rewarding the workforce, instead of treating them in this Dickensian fashion.”

He called for the “fire and rehire” threat to be “taken off the table” in negotiations.

Unite members at British Airways’ cargo division are also taking industrial action against “fire and rehire” contracts.

Rail union RMT recognises the threats posed by the “fire and rehire” tactic.

The government’s Department for Transport is advertising for a new director of rail with “experience of industrial relations and pensions.” Read what you will into that.

The union says some companies are already mounting attacks under the smokescreen of the Covid-19 pandemic — a need, say the employers, for changes in working practices, including lower wages, to deal with problems caused by the pandemic and government restrictions, particularly in the public transport industry.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash told the Morning Star: “There is no question whatsoever that the Covid pandemic is set to be used as a strategic opportunity by the employers to break pay and conditions in some of our most unionised industries through the ruthless deployment of fire and rehire.

“It’s already creeping into the transport and maritime sectors and bosses are clearly working on a co-ordinated assault and we have to meet that in kind as a labour and trade union movement.

“We need the maximum solidarity and support for those workers already fighting this battle on the front line. No-one should underestimate the threat posed to solid, unionised jobs and we will have to harness our joint strength to the full to fight it off.”

That’s the one positive factor about the “fire and rehire” strategy — workers and their unions fighting back.

In Manchester the Unite senior shop steward representing the 400 striking Go North West bus workers is Colin Hayden.

He told the Morning Star: “The employers wanted cuts. They wanted changes to sick pay which would have cost any worker with long-term illness £9,000 a year.

“We negotiated. We put forward proposals which would mean savings for the company of up to £1 million a year. They broke off the talks.

“They called in workers individually and told them that if they did not sign the new contracts they would be sacked. Letters were hand delivered to every employee.

“Our members voted by 82.3 per cent for strike action. Last year Go Ahead made £1.4 billion in profits. This year it is £787 million.

“The pandemic has been a classic opportunity for employers to do a race to the bottom on our wages.”

The employers’ “fire and rehire” tactic is legal. The Tories’ pre- general election promise in 2019 to enshrine workers’ rights and protections into law after leaving the European Union are proving as worthless as they were unbelievable in the first place.

Colin Hayden, picketing at the Queens Road bus depot in Manchester said: “Fire and rehire should be outlawed. Without that our only defence is direct action — strike action.”

In Yorkshire the British Gas workers’ strike has seen mass pickets — socially distanced — at the company’s regional headquarters in Leeds.

Peter Davies is senior organiser for the GMB in West Yorkshire, where, as elsewhere, GMB gas workers are solid in their strike against “fire and rehire” tactics.

He said: “Our British Gas members have shown that direct strike action is the only route available to workers to stand up to employers who choose the draconian option of fire and rehire to bolster their profits — profits I might add that they have made during the worst and deadliest pandemic we have seen in modern history.

“British Gas senior management praised those same workers for putting themselves and their families at risk during this pandemic by ensuring that they turned up to repair heating systems to save customers from freezing in the winter.

“Now we know that at the same time the bean counters were busy in their remote office spaces at home planning the slash and burn of their terms and conditions to keep their investors sweet.

“Fire and rehire shouldn’t be something that we simply consider immoral, it should be illegal, and the next Labour government needs to make sure that becomes a reality.”

At grassroots level, the recognition of the threat from “fire and re-hire” is growing.

In the North West, the trade union councils of the cities of Manchester and Salford have held packed meetings on the issue, in support of the 400 striking bus workers.

Actor Maxine Peake, who is an ambassador for the Morning Star, has made a video for the Institute of Employment Rights (IER) about the danger to workers’ living standards posed by the “fire and rehire” tactic, and the ruthless bosses who are deploying it.

She lives in Greater Manchester and is supporting the Manchester bus workers’ strike.

She told the Morning Star: “I think fire and rehire is criminal. It should be made into a criminal offence. It should not be allowed. It is absolutely shocking that these hard-working bus workers are under threat.”

IER director Carolyn Jones said: “Fire and rehire tactics have reached epidemic proportions since the coronavirus pandemic began. Super-exploitation of this nature is best resisted by workers and their unions taking direct collective action against the employer.

“Waiting for politicians to act or for changes in the law will not deliver the immediate impact needed to show employers this action will not be tolerated.”

Research by the TUC has revealed the extent of the threat from “fire and rehire.”

It said: “The controversial practice of ‘fire and rehire’ has become widespread during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Nearly one in 10 workers have been told to re-apply for their jobs on worse terms and conditions since the first lockdown in March.”

Rebecca Long Bailey, Labour MP for Salford and Eccles in north-west England, has raised the issue of “fire and rehire” in the House of Commons.

She told the Morning Star: “John Hendy QC and Keith Ewing wrote last year that ‘workers have become commodified; and in a health pandemic they have become vulnerable and disposable commodities.’

“Nowhere is this felt more than on the picket line of Go North West staff who I have visited with the mayor and deputy mayor of Salford.

“Workers have been forced to accept new contracts on inferior terms in a brutal fire and rehire attack. These are bus drivers who worked on the front line throughout the pandemic and face having their sickness agreement ripped up and working longer hours for less pay.

“This is no way to treat any workers let alone those who have put their lives at risk in this pandemic as an occupational group with raised rates of Covid-19 deaths.

“The whole country is watching the plight of these workers and those at Centrica/British Gas.

“The government must legislate to ban ‘fire and rehire’ practices urgently and in the meantime Go North West and Centrica/British Gas must immediately suspend the threat of firing and rehiring these workers and return to the negotiating table.”