NEC Report to BECTU 2002 Conference paragraphs 139-192
Recruitment and retention overview
139 In 2001 the following new members were recruited:
Arts & Entertainment 1,401140 Despite the above, the union's overall membership declined by 1,299 members. The only divisions showing net growth were Independent Broadcasting and Regional Production.
London Production 942
BBC 921
Independent Broadcasting 801
Regional Production 449
Laboratories 57
141 The 2002 recruitment and retention campaign concentrates heavily on mapping the membership in the permanently employed areas. This should allow us to focus our resources on employers and specific categories of staff where our membership is low. In the London and Regional Production divisions priority is given to retention. Both in the permanently employed and freelance areas we desperately need more activists in order to help us build the membership. We expect to run about ten Organising for Growth courses in 2002. These courses equip the representatives with the necessary skills to recruit and organise at a local level.
Proposition 12/02 (AP18) Organising for Growth
That this annual conference proposes a programme of cross-divisional Organising for Growth courses be initiated to facilitate greater contact and co-operation between divisions.
142 The 2002 campaign continues with the theme of having a high level of visibility in the workplaces. This is helped by the recruitment visits, including a stand highlighting the benefits of BECTU membership. The local BBC and ITV companies continue to be the biggest employers of freelances outside of London and therefore any recruitment at the BBC and ITV companies will also cater for freelancers.
143 Additional time from existing resources will be targeted at our campaign at BskyB. We now have active branches in London, Livingstone and Dunfermline. Sky is the biggest single employer where we have no collective recognition. They have rejected all approaches for a voluntary recognition agreement.
144 The London and Regional Production divisions will work with skillsformedia in targeting colleges that provide training schemes for the media industry.
145 New Media continues to be a growth area. The London and Regional Production and the permanently employed divisions are working together on building our membership in this important area.
146 Visits by officials of the London and Regional Production divisions to studios and location sites are now an integral part of the job and this should demonstrate the union's commitment to dealing with problems for freelances.
147 In theatres a lot of the recruitment activities coincide with industrial activities. Because of the high turnover across Arts & Entertainment generally, the building of the activists' base is crucial. We have identified a problem in retaining casuals in membership when a production closes. Many believe that their membership will continue once they find another production to work on. This is not always the case and we are considering asking casuals in Arts & Entertainment to move off deduction-at-source in favour of direct debit.
Proposition 13/02 (AP6) Recruitment and retention policy
That this annual conference instructs that the recruitment and retention policy be reviewed to ensure that a thorough evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses evident from previous years are taken into account and the policy meets the changing needs of our union.
Proposition 14/02 (AP7) Recruitment
That this annual conference acknowledges the problem of dwindling membership in some divisions. Conference instructs the NEC to set up new recruitment initiatives based on an incentive scheme. Existing members who sign up a colleague should be rewarded with a small token along the lines of vouchers for well-known shops or cinema tickets - as the NEC sees fit.
BBC division
148 Despite strenuous recruitment efforts this year and the fact that we have actually recruited more people than in previous years, the overall membership is continuing to drop. The key reason for this is that redundancies are hitting BECTU strongholds. The plan for 2002 is as follows.
New Starters
149 NO Willie Lesslie will continue to have responsibility for new starters. His task will be to distribute a welcome letter and a new starters pack to all those listed on the BBC disk of new recruits. In order to measure accurately the strike rate, new members will be compared against the BBC disk. We have again found the follow-up exercise of phoning the new starters very difficult as many are not at their desks. However, the overall exercise is very valuable as it tells new BBC employees about BECTU.
Regional visits
150 Despite being one official down all year, we have honoured all the regional visits outlined in the 2001 campaign, and we would propose the same for 2002. See Appendix F to this report.
BBC London
151 The one-day recruitment stalls have improved our profile but it is very difficult to ascertain whether many members have been recruited.
BBC Production Petals
152 Last year we gave Helen Ryan responsibility for mapping the membership in this area. With 10,000 staff and approximately 2,500 members there is lots of scope for recruitment. Helen has already created the following branches with active committees:
- BBC English
- BBC Factual & Learning
- BBC Children's TV
- BBC Drama Entertainment Children's
- BBC Sport
- BBC London Live
BBC Contractors
153 As a result of a recent agreement with Land Securities Trillium, we have had our recognition extended to include Catering, Security, Cleaning and Building Engineering. NO Feyi Raimi-Abraham will be attempting to recruit and organise the 1,500 staff covered by this agreement. We will measure this project by putting new recruits into specific BBC contractor branches. We also need to identify the non-members in the finance company, Medas, where membership is low.
BBC Transmission
154 NO Willie Lesslie will be required to map the membership in the Merlin sites before the end of December 2001 and will, with the assistance of local activists, visit the sites and target non-members. This task is to be completed by the end of March.
155 NO Willie Lesslie will be required to map the membership in Castle Transmission by the end of March and target the sites such as Warwick, with the highest numbers of non-members, using the same formula as is proposed for Merlin. This task is to be completed by the end of June.
Other BBC Initiatives
156 NO Andrea Church will also be required to map the membership in Cardiff and Belfast and target non-members. Andrea will also try and identify local reps in the old Production areas. NO Jim Johnstone will be required to map the membership and do a major recruitment exercise in Worldwide.
Conclusion
157 We are expecting proposals in London Operations to save £1 million by job cuts resulting in approximately 25 job losses. In Technology Ltd we expect numbers to grow. In Factual & Learning London we expect 150 to 200 redundancies. Our membership density is 30% so we could lose 60 members. In Factual & Learning Bristol we expect 30 job losses in BECTU grades. We expect ten job losses in Religion Manchester. We are aware of growth in New Media. We expect job losses in HR and Finance. However this should not affect many BECTU members. We have had redundancies in Castle Transmission. With the exception of Factual & Leaning we are not aware of major job losses for 2002. If this is correct we believe it is very possible to make a net gain of 400 members, excluding the contractors where our target is 300 new members.
London Production Division
158 The NEC are well aware of the staffing problems encountered by the production divisions. Despite this, some of the objectives for 2001 have been met and their work will certainly continue in 2002, namely:
- Continuing focus on new joiners
- Specific progress on the post production sector
- New entrants
- Profiling appropriate colleges
- Being more visible at the workplaces
Recruitment
Studio/location visits
161 Their will be a regular rota of visits to the film studios to gather intelligence on new feature film productions, which will then be allocated to a named official for production visits and other recruitment activities. This would also complement the system in place for dealing with TV production lists received from PACT.
Graduate recruitment
162 NOs Tom Bell and Dean Baker are working on a plan to sell the union to tutors in colleges who are likely to be teaching courses which will result in graduates finding employment in our industry. This involves contracting a specialist educational mailing house who will distribute our material. Visits will be provided if requested.
Post-production and facilities sector
163 With a full staff, we will be able to leaflet and arrange meetings and surgeries for this sector in the Soho area. We estimate that our membership density is no greater than 10% and therefore a lot of potential recruits are available. The targeted companies are listed in Appendix F to this report. Members will be handed colour coded leaflets and new recruits will be put into branches where we can measure the success later.
Rebuilding the craft branches
164 During 2000, we introduced industrial initiatives for the Grips and Riggers branches which are hoped will be seen by workers as a benefit of membership which would improve their employability. The results are now coming through and both in percentage and number terms, these have been the most successful branches in the division, when it comes to recruitment. Each NO will be expected to identify similar initiatives for their branches before the end of March and these will need to be approved by Martin Spence and the branches. The results can be monitored by reviewing the branch analysis on a quarterly basis.
Retention
New joiners
165 We have identified new joiners as a continuing retention problem, many drop out of membership in their first year. We will be continuing to:
- Invite every new member to a meeting where they will be given the opportunity to discuss their membership and the benefits thereof. This will happen quarterly.
- Every new joiner will receive a letter after being in membership for three months, inviting them to comment on union services.
Transfer of members between divisions
166 We need to remind all officials of the current system for dealing with transfers, which is:
- The official in the area where the redundancies are taking place will advise the
appropriate official in the freelance sector of the names and addresses of members who are being made redundant. - Where it is practical, a meeting with redundant staff will take place attended by both officials. At the very least, every redundant member will receive a letter from the London or Regional Production division, outlining the benefits of their membership. In order to continue to monitor the situation, three months after the redundancies have been completed, the relevant official will check how many have continued their membership. Those who have dropped out will be written to with a questionnaire. In Regional Production, the regional official will be responsible for this exercise. In London Production, NO Spencer Macdonald will be responsible for this project.
Conclusions
167 Working on the earlier assumption that feature film production will improve and that we are taking serious steps to deal with the retention issue, a net gain of 300 members is our realistic target.
Arts & Entertainment
168 For 2001, we are committed to making a number of theatre visits. In the main this has been achieved with just under one hundred theatres receiving visits from officials. However, only a handful of them were theatres with no previous union organisation. Some of the other initiatives, which attempted to recruit front-of-house and cinema managers, were unsuccessful. Also, the proposed review of the branch structure has not progressed swiftly enough.
Cinemas
169 ABC and Odeon have merged and this will lead to cinema closures. We expect UGC to remain broadly the same this year. In the independent sector, we have recruited 58 members at the Ritzy in Brixton, which is part of the Oasis group, who also own one other cinema in London and another in Edinburgh. They have agreed to deduction-at-source facilities for staff and have also agreed to talk about recognition. In the Odeon chain we intend targeting cinemas with low membership by using lay activists from other sites to sell them benefits of union membership. In the first quarter, 12 cinemas will be targeted and results will be monitored. It will only be extended if the results are good, alternatively, the Subdivision will have to look at other initiatives. In UGC, NO Willie Lesslie will provide SO Willie Donaghy and AGS Gerry Morrissey with a list before the end of the year with arrangements for cinemas in the circuit to receive a visit; about four months after the visit we will do a monitoring exercise and report on the success and failure of the visits.
Leisure
170 As previously agreed with branch support we will target individual companies for recognition.
Art centres and regional theatres
171 Because of the recommendations of the Boydon report we can expect more funds to be put into this sector. This should come on stream in April when we will be aiming to put some of the money to improve pay and the creation of permanent employment. Best value process is having a detrimental affect in local authority theatres, because soon after contracting the work to a commercial company we've seen an increase in the use of casual labour. The good aspect of best value is that contracting out can lead to the bundling of sites and this can give us recognition for more sites. The following venues have been identified as ones where income has been decreasing for no obvious reason other than a lack of union presence. A quarter of the nominated theatres will receive a visit by the end of the first quarter, half by the end of the second quarter, three quarters by the end of the third quarter, and all of them by the end of the year. (See Appendix F to this report.)
National houses
172 The four national houses make up 31% of the total income of the Arts & Entertainment division. This underlines why it is important for us to resist the casualisation proposals of the RSC. The Barbican venue will close down in May 2002.
173 NO Mark David Gray will target recruitment efforts at administration and front-of-house staff at the ENO when membership has declined. Despite this, the overall income at ENO has increased. SO Willy Donaghy will prioritise recruitment at the Royal National Theatre in the production departments and front-of-house. Likewise, at the Royal Opera House, Willy will concentrate on FOH areas and he will also investigate the possibility of creating a technical managers branch. NO Mark David Gray will look at creating an active branch at the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
West End Theatres
174 Despite the resources put into this area and the fact that we have a serious dispute with SOLT, the employers association, membership and income are in decline in real terms. The local organisation needs a complete overhaul. It is not possible for one official to recruit, organise and negotiate for 40 theatres, in addition to their regional theatre responsibilities. The following will happen for 2002:
- The 40 theatres will be split for recruitment and organisation purposes amongst a number of officials as outlined in Appendix F to this report, who will visit each theatre in the month of January, April, July and October and make a written report to SO Willy Donaghy, including recommendations on how to improve activity in individual theatres.
- All stewards will be encouraged by NO Mark David Gray to use the pre-production meeting clause outlined in the collective agreement.
Conclusion
175 The RSC and Barbican Centre are the only redundancies which we know about or expect. Management plans at the RSC would result in a loss of income of £10,000 and 120 members. The re-opening of the Birmingham Hippodrome and Stratford East will offset the majority of these losses. If a reasonable number of our recruitment initiatives are successful we would expect a net increase in membership of 300.
Independent Broadcasting
176 In 2001 we have consistently retained over 3,000 paid-up members. Further consolidation of ITV companies and a significant fall in advertising revenues has led to redundancies this year and more are predicted for 2002. Even though our overall membership is low in Sky we have this year increased membership and in Dunfermline we have an active branch. There has been a marked increase in collective bargaining in ITV, this has improved our profile and increased membership and helped with retention. We have met the vast majority of planned visits which were outlined in the 2001 strategy. Allied to the Sky campaign, we have put significant efforts into MBC, MTV and other cable and satellite companies, where we are using the recognition legislation. The downside of this is a significant increase in personnel cases. A much more focused recruitment campaign has operated inside NTL this year within our new collective bargaining area. Membership has increased in NTL by about 200. However the constant change taking place inside NTL often hampers our long-term plans .
2002 Plans
ITV
177 The creation of ITV Unions - the new inter-union body drawing representatives from across the ITV network and meeting on a quarterly basis - will give a new focus to our work. If delivered correctly, we believe staff will view the union as the appropriate vehicle for dealing with their problems, especially if the Communications White Paper relaxes ownership rules.
178 This initiative will be supported by a quarterly newsletter to be distributed at the doors of each ITV company. Our weak areas are the production grades and technical operatives. Negotiating committees need to ensure that the collective bargaining agenda caters for the needs of women employees and should include claims on family friendly policies and work life balance. Appendix F to this report gives the details of regional ITV visits and the London IB weeks.
NTL
179 NO David Beevers will continue the current recruitment strategy of mailshots and site visits across the recognised areas. The site visits are being structured around NTL's team meetings. In addition, one week will be dedicated to recruitment in NTL and David will be supported by SO Sharon Elliott and NOs Andrea Church and Willie Lesslie.
Sky and cable/satellite
180 In Sky, the majority of the work-force must know by now that BECTU is their appropriate union. SO Sharon Elliott and NO Paul McManus have had a number of successes in grievances and disciplinaries and we need to promote the union successes better. We need to produce new material and we will be arranging for regular surgeries, regular leafleting sessions and trying to encourage potential activists to go on training courses.
181 NO Feyi Raimi-Abraham will be expected to devote a significant part of her time to the Sky campaign. Across the rest of cable and satellite, our aim is to win recognition at Ideal World Home Shopping and ITFC following the successful campaign at MTV.
Regulation
182 Members at the ITC and Radio Authority are understandably concerned about their future and what will happen when Ofcom is created. Meeting between the three unions (BECTU, PCS and IPMS) and the steering group who have been given responsibility for relations within Ofcom took place in September 2001 and February 2002. A further meeting with DTI and DCMS officials is scheduled for April 2002. It is vital that we retain our collective agreements after Ofcom has been created and the ITC and Radio Authority have been disbanded.
Conclusion
183 Despite having been an official down for the entire year, we have met the vast majority of our recruitment initiatives for the year. With the additional resources agreed by the NEC we will deliver a more focused strategy across our key areas and improve the membership. It is impossible to say what will happen with redundancies across ITV as a result of falling advertising revenue and there is the added concern about the future of ITN. However, we are confident that we can increase membership by 400 members.
Regional Production division
184 The opening comments in the London Production section broadly apply within Regional Production, although there are obviously regional variations in levels of production.
2002 Strategy
Location visits
185 Long-term illness and staff shortages have affected the number of location visits this year. Our aim is to increase the number of location visits and improve the union's profile.
Graduates
186 The plan for mailings to colleges has been dealt with under the London Production division; these mailings will be extended to regional colleges. The follow-up will be done by the appropriate regional official.
Branch organisation
187 The following branches have been identified as ones where the membership has fallen over the past year. The appropriate regional official is expected to produce a branch development plan taking into account the state of the regional/national industry and the potential in post production and facilities as well as in production generally. These branches are:
Ireland North NO David Donovan188 Branch development plans are monitored quarterly.
Northern NO Paul Atkinson
Scottish NO Paul McManus
Southwest NO David Donovan
Yorkshire and Humberside NO Paul Atkinson
Conclusion
189 We believe a growth of 200 members is a reasonable target.
Laboratories
190 We have had large scale redundancies in 2001 and there is a possibility of further redundancies in 2002. Even though our density is very high it may not be as high as we believe. We need to map the membership to give us an accurate density. Organising for growth courses will be arranged for the representatives. We will target Todd-AO (London) and Buck Labs in Slough where we have little to no membership. AGS Martin Spence will lead this project.
Conclusion
191 With an already high density of membership we do not believe that a net gain of more than 80 is possible.
Scotland
192 The recruitment opportunities in Scotland are unique. Call centres at Sky, NTL, major opportunities within production grades in the BBC and the need to rebuild the Freelance branch leads us to conclude that Scotland should be a recruitment priority for us. For specific projects we will put in additional resources from London and also by using the skills of Margaret McGrevey in the Glasgow office in building branches and identifying activists.