BBC Lay Reps blog

Report of Chair BBC Division

A year of highs and lows, anxiety and consternation for members.

Our biggest high was in the not inconsiderable achievement of mitigating the number of compulsory redundancies cause by the draconian “Value for Money” cuts.

Many officials and reps worked incredibly hard to achieve this, although it would be fair to say that we all felt extremely disappointed in the attitude of management in the Children’s department who seemed totally unconcerned at the amount of stress and worry they were causing their staff.

It was a lesson we would not forget when the next wave of cuts “Creative Futures” – came along even before VfM had finished. The DG Mark Thompson had promised us back in 2005 when VfM was announced that he wanted to make this one swingeing cut so that he wouldn’t have to come back for more. Well, another promise broken.

And so we were totally confident in going back to the membership for backing for industrial action once the BBC stated that many of the things they’d announced – cuts in UPA provision, changes to the Pension Scheme - were “non-negotiable”.

What followed was a phoney war with the BBC pretending to hold talks but without discussing anything, until as the date of our announcement of the ballot result neared they suddenly kicked into action. And with 3 hours to go before we called a strike they finally conceded on all the points we wanted – not everything, but a lot, and an agreement resulted which got the backing of over 92% of our membership.

True validation of our stance against these cuts, against compulsories, against imposed changes to Terms & Conditions – and against the instances of intransigent management. This time it was Vision who were being ridiculously unco-operative, so we ensured that this division had significant targets to reach written into the agreement before we’d endorse it. And to be fair to them, under the watchful eye of our officials, Vision have delivered a very positive attempt to reduce compulsories under severe targets imposed by the centre, and with the catastrophic impact of the WoCC on inhouse production now being clearly seen.

Away from the big cuts, it’s been up and down across the BBC – for every satisfactory resolution of a problem, another grievance against management is registered; and for every member for whom we manage to gain an agreeable outcome, another is left disgruntled and alienated by poor managers with scant regard for their staff’s feelings. A major problem for those of us who spend a fair amount of time dealing with individual members’ grievances, appeals and disciplinaries, is the variable (I’m being diplomatic here!) quality of middle management, HR officers and HR Case Managers. Greg Dyke’s drive to train them better does not appear to have borne fruit.

Industrially, we’ve negotiated some excellent agreements:

• On Desktop Editing in London for instance where the fight to find the balance between rational technological improvements and kneejerk “it’ll let us cut jobs” responses is being fought; on the lightweight satellite vehicles being piloted in many forms across English Regions, and on which we now have a generic agreement covering quite clearly which broadcast instances allow the deployment of a single operator;
• On the “palm pilots” implements, the first of which (the XDA) was actually developed by a BECTU member in Radio Lincoln and which are now proving a boon to many staff out in the field whose travel requirements are being cut by the ability to send in sound and images from on site;
  On the restructuring of newsrooms which for the first time have seen technical people employed on the same scale as senior journalists, as grade 8s;
• On the coming “Slice’n'Dice”, when a technological ability does not mean good news – but we’re clear that if the BBC want this new facility to be widely deployed, they’ll need to find the money to pay for it rather than simply dump it as an extra task on the rota.

Our message to management?

BECTU members want to be involved in discussing changes – whether technology or resources – at an early stage so that we can input our considerable knowledge and expertise, and hopefully avoid some of the errors of the past when management have bought various pigs in sundry pokes, and we will actively engage in order to do this BUT the days of the freebie are over – you want our members to do extra work, either employ extra people to do it, or drop something you do now to make room.

In the coming year the battle will be on the same front – proper jobs with proper training for proper programmes.

I represent BECTU on several committees looking closely at what will happen when the BBC moves almost 2000 jobs to Salford. Our demands are that while we support new jobs and new investment in the north west, members in London affected by the moves must be given realistic alternatives – relocation, retraining or voluntary redundancy. And those who do move, and those recruited locally, must have proper contracts and conditions. That also applies to those freelances who will get work in the production houses and studios which will litter the mediacity:uk site; BECTU now has a multi-divisional committee which draws together all the experience and concerns of the BBC, IP and RPD divisions.

I also believe BECTU will need to fight on two fronts over the bbcLocal plans, now going inexorably through the Public Value Tests and the BBC Trust protocols. Firstly, we will need to deploy any political clout we have to help overcome the opposition of the independent commercial interests, because it means 400-600 jobs for us. And secondly, when bbcLocal does get the go-ahead, we need to ensure that those jobs are not cheap, multi-skilled alternatives to employing professional trained operatives, but rather are employed on properly negotiated contracts and terms & conditions. But overall we believe that bbcLocal will be a big bonus, offering many new jobs and showing a significant financial and people investment in a previously unglamorous part of the BBC – local radio and new media combined.

So big battles ahead, but with the terrific teams behind us, I’m confident we can do a real job for the membership.

I’d like to thank all the officials at Clapham who’ve helped me as Chair of the Division, but especially Luke Crawley and his successor as SO Helen Ryan, who’ve been personally extraordinarily generous with their time and advice; and I’d also like to praise the other 3 full-time seconded lay officers – BECTU is extremely fortunate to have people of the calibre of Tony Lennon, Dan Cooke and Jane Perry prepared to work for its members up and down the country; and finally thanks to a very supportive Divisional Committee – never short of a good debate or an interesting angle – and a powerful and committed NJC squad; and to my Vice Chair, Charlotte Simon, in whose hands I’m never worried about leaving a meeting!