Another BBC ballot - this time Resources
A strike vote is being held in BBC London Resources after negotiations on £12m of cuts ended without agreement.
Talks on more than 260 redundancies, and changes in working conditions and earnings for over 1,000 staff employed by BBC Resources Ltd in London, concluded yesterday (October 19).
Read full report of final negotiating meeting
Despite concessions from management which, over nearly three months of discussions, had significantly reduced the number of compulsory redundancies, major differences still separated the two sides.
The union was unwilling to accept new conditions of service which would scrap existing agreements for the scheduling and reward of long days and short breaks, and also introduce the concept of base area being anywhere within 15 miles of Television centre.
Members had also expressed concerns about the abolition of ad hoc acting payments (ERR), and tougher scheduling of night duties. A union counter-proposal aimed at resolving many of the problems with the new conditions of service was rejected out of hand by management, except for clauses which simply tidied up the wording of the original draft.
One new concession was tabled by management at the meeting in the form of a proposed reward for working long days. The union was offered a choice of a 1T payment for days over 13 hours, or alternatively 0.5T beyond 13 coupled with a 0.5T payment for infringements of the 11 hour break.
This proposal, however, fell well short of the existing provisions in Studios and OBs for reward of days over 12 hours and breaks shorter than 10, and union reps told management that neither of the alternatives was acceptable.
Staff on days conditions of service, with no hourly overtime, also faced a serious cut in earnings because of the redefinition of a "long" day from 12 hours to 13.
Management said that they wanted to harmonise the new conditions of service with the Working Time Directive, which stipulates that breaks between duties should be 11 hours.
Logically, they said, this meant that up to 13 hours could be scheduled without any need for individual consent, and as a consequence the formula for calculating WOODs payments for days conditions staff would be reworded to require four days of at least 13 hours in a week before any extra payment was received.
Currently the formula, part of the national conditions of service, requires four 12 hour days before extra payments are earned, and the change to 13 was rejected by the union.
Management also wanted the right to schedule long days compulsorily - at present the agreements in Studios and OBs allow staff to opt out of long day working if they wish.
The number of staff facing compulsory redundancy was dramatically boosted at the October 19 meeting, when management announced that talks with production departments interested in taking over the Studio Management section had collapsed. Nearly 40 staff, most of them Floor Managers and Assistants, would be made redundant as a result, with notice being issued in less than a fortnight.
Until the final negotiating meeting, the union had commended management for whittling down the list of compulsory redundancies from more than 260 to only 5 in Radio OBs, 11 in the Manchester OB base, and a potential handful among managers, allocators, and admin staff.
Both sides were confident that once internal interviews had been held for a raft of new posts in the management and admin structure, the list of victims would be further reduced. However the bombshell news about Studio Management left the union in a position where large-scale compulsory redundancies looked inevitable.
Since the meeting was the last in a series of negotiations under the procedures agreed with the BBC, London Ops management are now planning to go ahead with interviews and redundancy selection, while the union runs an industrial action ballot.
The formal seven day notice of an impending ballot required under law was due to be sent to the BBC today (October 20), and ballot papers should be sent to members throughout London Operations, including Post-production and Graphics, some time after October 30.