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Ballot letter to BBC Education members 19.10.00
Dear Colleague,
EDUCATION - FACTUAL AND LEARNING
The BBC has made proposals to restructure BBC Education, and BECTU is concerned about the impact of those changes upon you, the membership. We have attended several meetings with the BBC at which we have argued that the proposals will damage the employment prospects of the staff working in Education.
One of the key issues has been that Education will be split into four areas and the staff will be dispersed to other departments under the Factual and Learning, and Drama Entertainment & Childrens umbrella. We believe that this will increase the chances of you facing redundancy. For example, in Children's we know that there is under-utilisation (or over-capacity). Whatever you call it, there are too many staff. We believe that over staffing will mean proposals for redundancy and that those who had recently transferred in from Education would be at the front of any queue for selection. In order to forestall this situation we have asked the BBC to guarantee that Education staff would not face redundancy proposals for several years following this restructuring. The BBC have argued that doing so could be seen as discriminatory. We would say that since it is their change that places Education staff under a greater threat of redundancy there is no discrimination in removing that threat until the new structure is shown to be working. The BBC have refused to give this guarantee.
We have also argued that the BBC should guarantee that existing Education staff should be allowed to continue to work on Education programmes if they so wish for a period after the re-structuring. It would be a matter of choice for the individual whether to work on other kinds of programme. The BBC have argued that if there is downtime they would insist on deploying staff onto other output. We would argue that surely the purpose of this restructuring is to ensure that there is no downtime for the makers of Education programme makers. Again, the BBC have refused to give this guarantee.
There are other issues concerning the restructuring of Education. However they are not the substance of this dispute. We are in dispute with the BBC because as a result of the changes proposed your employment prospects are damaged, and the BBC has failed to give the necessary guarantees to protect your position.
This has left us with no option but to ballot for industrial action. For the ballot to be successful we need a good turnout and a majority voting yes.
If there is a yes vote, as we would expect, we will be calling a half day strike to begin the campaign. You will be notified of the date and time the industrial action will begin. If you have any queries about this ballot please contact Robert Albury x25004 or contact me at BECTU Head Office on 020 7437 8506 or via e-mail [email protected]" Yours sincerely,
LUKE CRAWLEY
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