BBC provokes bad feeling over rates

BECTU is challenging an attempt by the BBC to change the way freelance workers present their invoices.

A number of BECTU freelance members with well-established personal rates have received letters telling them to present their rate on their invoices so that it appears to include holiday pay at 10.2%.

BECTU believes that the BBC’s instruction is a de facto reduction of freelance rates, driven by the BBC’s past failure to treat freelance workers’ holiday entitlement properly. The union is arguing that where freelance workers have an established personal rate which has previously been paid that they are entitled to regard this as their basic rate excluding any element of holiday pay.

BECTU Assistant General Secretary Martin Spence has informed the BBC that this development is “deeply resented” by freelance members.

A meeting between the union and senior BBC management is being arranged.