Defend jobs - Stop compulsory redundancies

Support the BBC journalists strike

Monday 1 August NUJ picket

6am-7pm at BBC, Oxford Road

Following the successful strike on Friday 15 July, see picture, journalists at the BBC are preparing to strike on Monday 1 August over compulsory redundancies.

The NUJ has called for urgent talks with the corporation to resolve the threat of compulsory redundancies for the small number of outstanding cases and for the reinstatement of a member dismissed in the BBC World Service. Industrial action will go ahead if the BBC fail to address these issues.

Management has so far rejected solutions from the NUJ to resolve the issues, and two NUJ members at BBC Monitoring are due to be forced to leave their jobs over the next ten days.

The BBC frozen license fee deal is being blamed for the need to make 20% cuts across the corporation. This deal was done behind closed doors. There was no consultation with staff, audiences or BBC supporters. It is a rotten deal and ordinary members of staff will be expected to bear the consequences in job cuts.

There is an alternative

BBC waste and unfair pay should be addressed rather than ordinary members of staff being forced from their jobs. The BBC should not be making people leave the BBC on grounds of compulsory redundancy when there are straightforward alternatives. We have and will continue to put these to the BBC including:

• Releasing volunteers: the BBC has dozens of people who want to leave across the corporation. In BBC Monitoring volunteers have been rejected, despite this leading directly to the threat of compulsory redundancies.
• Redeployment: the BBC has ring-fenced 100 jobs in Salford for people who are at risk. This number should be increased, rather than jobs going external, and there should be      no red tape in redeploying people into them.

• Resources: BBC senior managers are responsible for ensuring licence fee money is spent properly and not wasted. Money should be spent on staffing core programme making and journalism, not wasted on vanity projects

Waste not want not

• Top pay at the BBC is 21.5 times the median salary and 47 times the lowest salary. If pay was fairer, fewer jobs of programme makers and broadcasters would be at risk.
• A report published in March 2011 by the Public Accounts committee on the BBC’s Digital Media initiative has shown that failings in the project cost the licence fee payer £26 million which had to be saved in ‘efficiencies’ (cuts) within the BBC divisions - £26      million = 650 jobs for a year