BBC Under Fire Again As Strike Action Looms

BBC unions have voted to ballot for national strike action, in protest at compulsory redundancies and other changes.
Representatives of BECTU, NUJ, and Unite voted for industrial action ballots after hearing that the BBC planned compulsory redundancies, despite the emergence of hundreds of volunteers.
The meeting followed a BBC-wide day of action on 5 November, with meetings and pavement gatherings at buildings across the UK.
BBC Director General Mark Thompson proposes to cut a total of 2,500 jobs across the corporation.
Unions were informed that 343 staff had volunteered for redundancy in News, and 303 staff in Vision. The BBC’s target for cuts was 328 in News and 440 in Vision.
Further compulsory redundancies are threatened in BBC Scotland and other parts of the corporation including the World Service, and the Thompson cuts plan also affects Nations & Regions, Future Media & Technology, and Audio & Music.
Unions are demanding that the trawls for volunteers should be extended, and that more effort should be made to retrain and redeploy threatened staff in the 700 new jobs that the BBC plans to create in the next five years.
On top of the 2,500 job cuts, the BBC plans to withhold unpredictability allowances (UPA) from new staff from 1 January 2008 and implement changes to the pension scheme from April 2010 - plans that the unions have rejected.
Gerry Morrissey, BECTU’s General Secretary said: “The current financial shortfall of £2.2bn is a shortfall based on the BBC’s wish list to government which was not agreed as part of the licence fee settlement. Rather than continuing with this wish list, we believe that BBC management should be using the available resources to deliver quality programmes across Factual, Drama News and Sport. This is what the general public wants, not the BBC’s expansion plans.”
Ballot papers will go out to members after 30 November and the ballot will close on 9 January 2008. If members vote to strike, industrial action could take place seven days after this.
(DS)