BBC Children’s strike ballot

Union members in the BBC Children's Education Unit have voted to ballot for strike action over job cuts in the department.

In the BBC's continued wave of job losses, nine staff in the Children's Education Unit are now to be issued with compulsory redundancy notices.

The BBC is set to lose staff who, for many years, have been making educational and entertaining programmes for children.

The announcement follows the recent decision by Children's BBC to open the News, Factual and Learning department.

This has brought together under one umbrella Blue Peter, Newsround, Children's Education as well as other factual genre programming.

The aspiration behind the move was to make programmes with Learning staff playing a key role in the new structured department.

However, not all staff have been integrated into the wider Children's TV group, and now that guaranteed commissions to schools' programmes have been withdrawn, the Children's Education Unit has been closed and redundancy notices issued to remaining staff in the unit.

This has angered BECTU and NUJ members who now want to ballot for strike action to save their jobs.

If members vote for strike action, the first wave of industrial action is likely to take place at the end of June.

BECTU's National Official Helen Ryan commented: "Despite there being an over subscription for voluntary redundancies, the BBC will not retract the notice of redundancies.

"The BBC is losing experienced and talented staff who have been making programmes for the BBC for many years, yet this loss of talent could be avoided."