RPI pay offer made by BBC Resources
Members working for the BBC's TV facilities subsidiary have been offered an inflation-linked pay rise for 2005.
At the first negotiating meeting in this year's pay talks, BBC Resources Ltd tabled an increase of 3.5%, the latest figure for inflation.
Management said that almost all the cash available for the 2005 pay rise had been put into the basic increase. However some associated payments would increase by slightly more than RPI, either to help lower-paid staff, or because of being rounded up.
Although the company emphasised that trading conditions remained tough due to fierce competition, union negotiators told management that the rise was not sufficient to win their agreement, and tabled a counter-bid for a rise of 4.5%, coupled with a £750 minimum increase to improve rates for the lower-paid.
BECTU also demanded that a group of Resources staff who have opted for buy-out deals, called Special Fixed Salaries (SFS), and who effectively negotiate their own annual increases, should not receive rises less than staff on standard terms and conditions.
In last year's Resources pay deal, the union secured this commitment as a safety net for SFS staff, but at the meeting on the 2005 rise, management refused to repeat the offer. BECTU is still pressing for SFS staff to be included in the 2005 pay settlement.
A management proposal for a two-year deal, with a second RPI increase in 2006, was turned down at the meeting by union negotiators.
As well as asking management to consider an improved percentage increase, the union called for trainees in Resources to be put onto the same terms and conditions as other staff. At present, trainees in technical categories spend their first two years on a low basic wage, with less favourable overtime payments than other staff.
BECTU made a significant step forward during the 2004 pay talks, when Resources agreed to transfer all trainees from insecure fixed term contracts into permanent pensionable posts.
Supporting their claim for an above-RPI increase, union representatives argued that the company was expecting to report another profitable year when accounts were drawn up in April, which would coincide with the pay anniversary.
Management responded with a prediction that even if the unions were to settle for the RPI offer on the table, only a proportion of the money needed to fund it would come from increases in the prices charged to BBC and external customers for the company's services. The rest would have to be found through internal savings, and there was no scope to raise prices at the same rate as inflation was increasing.
Squeezing the company's profits to fund the pay increase would, according to management, be unacceptable to Resources' sole shareholder, the BBC itself.
Management agreed to study the union's 4.5% counter-bid, and both sides are expecting further meetings in February. The company also promised to continue a series of meetings dating back to the 2004 pay talks, when working parties were set up to resolve problems to do with: the absence of a rate-for-the-job pay structure; the syllabus for trainees; and overruns on programmes.