STRIKE BALLOT CALLED AT BBC RESOURES

A STRIKE vote is being held in BBC Resources after negotiations on £12 million cuts ended without agreement.
Talks on more than 260 redundancies, and changes in working conditions and earnings for over 1,000 staff employed by BBC Resources in London broke down on October 19.
The Union were unwilling to accept new conditions of service which would scrap existing agreements for the scheduling and reward of long days and short breaks, and also introduce the concept of base area being anywhere within 15 miles of the Television Centre.
Members had also expressed concern about the abolition of ad hoc acting payment and tougher scheduling of night duties.
The number of staff facing compulsory redundancy was dramatically boosted at the meeting on October 19, management announced talks with production departments interested in taking over the Studio Management section had collapsed. Nearly 40 staff, most of them Floor Managers and Assistants, would be made redundant as a result with notice being issued in less than a fortnight.
Until the final negotiating meeting, the Union had commended management for whittling down the list of compulsory redundancies from more than 260 to only 5 in Radio OBs, 11 in the Manchester OB base, and a few managers, allocators and administrative staff.
Both sides were confident that once internal interviews had been held for a raft of new posts in the management and administrative structure, the list of redundancies would have been further reduced. However, the bombshell news about Studio Management left the Union in a position where large-scale compulsory redundancies looked inevitable.
Since the October 19 meeting was the last in a series of negotiations under the procedures agreed with BBC, London Operations Management are now planning to go ahead with interviews and redundancy selection, while the Union is to run an industrial ballot on possible strike action.