BBC DIRECTOR-GENERAL Mark Thompson has appealed to staff not to strike next week against proposed cuts to the pension scheme, and offered to cut pension rights for top managers by a fifth. The strike would “black out” much of the broadcaster’s coverage of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham and threaten relations with prime minister David Cameron.
Officials from three unions – the National Union of Journalists, Bectu and Unite – are to meet today to make final plans for next week’s 48-hour action beginning just after midnight on Tuesday.
A second strike is planned for October which would disrupt coverage of chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne’s Commons announcement of billions in spending cuts.
Mr Thompson, who said he was “disturbed” by the dates chosen, is struggling to deal with a pension fund that is £2 billion in the red. “Is this the right moment to strike? We’re still at the start of a process and are still working through the detail with the unions. It’s not that talks have broken down or there’s an unbridgeable gap,” he said.
Leading BBC journalists, including Newsnightpresenter Jeremy Paxman, have objected to the move. In a letter to the NUJ, the political staff said the strike would curb coverage of prime minister David Cameron's main speech, and severely restrict the near-blanket coverage offered by BBC News 24 and radio.
Staff, who voted nine to one for strike action, intend to strike unless there is “a significant new offer” from management.
In the letter opposing the action, the 36 signatories, who include the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson, said next week’s action “risks looking unduly partisan – particularly when none of the other party conferences have been targeted”. They insisted they did not disagree with the strike, but that the dates chosen would be counterproductive. “Impartiality is the watchword for the BBC’s political coverage and we would not wish to give a misleading impression that this is no longer something we value highly.”
The letter has prompted considerable bitterness among BBC staff, particularly since a copy of it was first published in the right-wing Daily Mail, a long-time BBC critic. Ian Pollock, chair of the NUJ's BBC London branch, said 11 of the signatories were not union members. "Frankly, I do not take kindly to non-members trying to unpick democratically taken decisions of the NUJ with the aid of loathsome enemies in Fleet Street."
In June, the BBC, which has not made a contribution into the staff pension fund for 15 years, said it wanted to curb pension rights because of the deficit. It proposed a cap of 1 per cent a year on the rate at which pensionable salaries could increase.
