Regional multiskilling row

BECTU has accused management of abusing an innovative agreement on multiskilling.

The agreement, covering personal digital production (PDP) equipment in the English Regions, has been running for three months and the union is concerned the agreement has been breached repeatedly.

The agreement on PDP allows volunteer staff to be trained in a mix of technical and journalistic skills. Successful trainees were expected to plan, shoot, and edit, news-style packages which would augment, but not replace, traditional news material in local programmes.

Various limits, many of them to do with health and safety, were also agreed on the range of assignments that PDP operators would be expected to accept.

The union is now concerned the original agreement has been breached repeatedly by managers who want to use PDP operators as replacements for regional news teams who are expected to produce speedy and professional results with a mix of technical and journalistic categories.

Some of the material produced by PDP staff has ended up being edited into routine news coverage, conflicting with the agreed plan for it always to be an add-on.

Managers have been criticised for using PDP staff as extra camera operators, instead of ensuring that they always work in stand-alone mode, and have also been accused of undermining the growing corps of Video Journalists, a category created under a separate multiskilling agreement.