Two months more to cut redundancies
Negotiators have been given an extra two months for talks on Mark Thompson's Value for Money job cuts.
Managers are under instructions to avoid compulsory redundancies wherever possible.
However, the deadline date of July this year, when the BBC will be free to issue notice of compulsory redundancy according to last year's ACAS agreement, has not been extended.
At a summit meeting on 12 January, Thompson agreed to order another round of talks about his Year 1 job cuts after senior union representatives briefed him on more than 250 redundancies that looked set to be compulsory.
The DG said that top managers would be asked to "redouble" their efforts to achieve savings without compulsory redundancies, and agreed to set up machinery for cross-divisional coordination of volunteers, vacancies, and job cuts.
Union representatives met Thompson under the terms of an agreement reached after strike action last May, which also allows the unions to resume industrial action if compulsory redundancies are threatened.
Thompson was warned that more strikes could be called unless all the redundancies caused by his 4,000 cut in headcount, were voluntary. After exhaustive talks with Divisions, running from June 2005 until last month, the unions believed that more than 90% of redundancies had been achieved voluntarily, and called on Thompson to deal with the relatively small proportion remaining by waiting for natural wastage.
However, the DG warned that it may not be possible to avoid some compulsory cuts. The situatioin across the BBC is varied.
In the Nations, Wales still has 38 potential compulsory cuts, Northern Ireland 16, and there are too few volunteers in Scotland, where a meeting is due this month.
In News, 45 people are at risk, compounded by the announcement last month of a further 110 cuts.
In Factual & Learning the number at risk is down to 34, in Sport only 1, and in DEC 4, although a further trawl may yeild volunteers there.
In Information & Archives talks are complete without any compulsory redundancies, as are talks in MC&A, where there were twice as many volunteers as redundancies.
Last month brought more bad news, with the announcement of 50-80 cuts in World Service Monitoring, and catastrophic cuts in Finance. Current staffing of 645 in Finance is planned to slim down to 280, 102 of them in a new Cardiff office, limiting the resettlement prospects of London staff.
BECTU will be using the extra bargaining time to whittle these numbers down, and will take stock with other unions before the BBC attempts to issue compulsory redundancy notices at the beginning of April.