Industrial action threat in BBC Resources

Managers of BBC TV Centre's studios in London have stunned staff by announcing 31 cost-saving redundancies, after making a record profit in the last financial year.

BBC Television Studio Production Resources (TSPR), which achieved a surplus of £4.5M in 1996/7 before internal corporate overheads were deducted, notified BECTU about compulsory redundancies amongst lighting, sound, camera and floor staff late last month.

After closing vacant posts, as many as 16 staff could be sacked due to "low utilisation", the first time that such a crude measurement has been used in Resources to select redundancies. Management refused to call for volunteers to come forward as a means of avoiding compulsory redundancies, and spurned the union's arguments that the level of the future workload should be reviewed before any final decisions were made about staffing.

BECTU's BBC Divisional Committee has agreed that members across the corporation can be balloted for industrial action if the BBC persists with these proposals that include the use of utilisation as a selection criteria for redundancy. Gerry Morrisey, the Division's Supervisory Official, said: "Utilisation rates are not within the individual's control and it cannot be used as an objective criterion for redundancy.

Similarly, unless management can demonstrate that an individual's low utilisation is because of poor performance when utilised then the issue of capability cannot be linked to utlisation."

Local BECTU representatives believe that the 31 post cuts will lead to increased use of contract and freelance staff, cancelling many of the savings that management hope to make, and have cited the recent Studio Servicing re-organisation as proof.

This section, part of TSPR, recently went through a major round of job cuts, since when there has been "increased and arbitrary" use of freelancers who have often been used in preference to in-house staff.

Last month's cuts announcement follows several years of staff reductions in TSPR as Producer Choice has put pressure on costs. In 1992 there was a large tranche of compulsory redundancies in the so-called "Phase Three" cuts, and morale in TSPR has not recovered since.

Union doubts about the management's powers of prediction were confirmed when Studio Engineering, one of the TSPR sections hardest-hit by the 1992 cuts, began recruiting new engineers last year in a desperate bid to keep the studios open.

Talks between the union and management are continuing locally at the time writing.