Plan agreed on BBC job cuts

Union negotiators have agreed a framework for negotiations over 2,500 BBC redundancies, with an emphasis on redeployment.

An agreement reached with management late on October 23 sets a timetable for discussions on the job cuts, and promises that there will be no talks on compulsory redundancies until each area affected has conducted a trawl for volunteers.

BECTU, NUJ, and Unite, met senior BBC managers after threatening that they would run strike ballots if the Corporation went ahead with an immediate trawl for volunteers without justifying the level of job cuts to negotiators.

Read full text of the agreement [494KB pdf].

Meetings with BBC divisions hit by the cuts will now begin on November 5, followed in each of them by a period of at least two weeks during which volunteers will be invited to step forward.

Only once this process has concluded will there be any discussion about compulsory redundancies if insufficient volunteers have been found.

At the October 23 meeting the BBC emphasised its support for one key union objective - the redeployment of staff to new jobs wherever possible as an alternative to compulsory redundancies.

Management made a commitment to redeploy at least 10% of displaced staff into other jobs, describing this proportion as a "floor", and anticipated that the actual level of redeployment could be much higher.

In the run-up to detailed talks about the cuts beginning on November 5, there will be meetings to discuss strategies which will maximise the chances of staff being resettled, including controls on external recruitment into vacancies, and a funding formula for redundancy payments which would encourage departments to redeploy staff wherever possible.

Based on job cut figures presented at the meeting, the unions believe that many compulsory redundancies will be avoided. Of the 2,500 jobs earmarked for closure, management expected 500 to disappear through natural wastage, and had already identified 200 resettlement opportunities.

The job losses will be offset by the creation of 900 new posts, as the BBC switches expenditure from TV production into online services, and £4 million has been set aside to retrain existing staff for new jobs.

Unions have also won separate talks on two controversial cost savings measures which were part of the overall savings package announced on October 18. Discussions will now be held on a plan to abolish enhanced pensions for staff made redundant over the age of 50 from 2010, and also on a management proposal to deny new staff premium payments for unpredictable scheduling from January 2008.

A management threat to abandon an existing agreement that gives redundant staff five months' notice of dismissal has been dropped after the unions argued that the extended period improves chances of redeployment. However the BBC warned that it might reconsider scrapping the agreement if the unions took industrial action during the current redundancy process.

Both management and unions expressed their concerns about the potential stress caused to staff who remain after the redundancies if their workload increases. The BBC offered to conduct thorough risk assessments of the impact that job cuts would have area by area, and at the meetings with divisions from November 5 onwards the unions will demand that redundancies are linked to reductions in output.

Divisions hit hardest by the cuts are the TV programming behemoth BBC Vision, where over 700 jobs may go, Nations and Regions, which faces over 600 cuts, and News where the tally is over 400.

The job reductions are part of a cost-saving package that will also see a 10% reduction in TV programme-making in a bid to close a £2.2 billion BBC funding gap over the next five years.

Ambitious promises for expansion which were made by the Corporation early in 2006 when the renewal of its Royal Charter was being discussed, were not subsequently matched by increased funding when a six-year formula for its Licence fee was set later that year.

Increases until 2013 will average at roughly 2% per year, lower than the anticipated rate of inflation.

Now that the unions have settled on a BBC-wide framework agreement on handling job cuts, discussions with Divisions will begin in earnest.

BBC Vision and BBC News will be first to explain their proposals to the unions, and dates are already in diaries. Nations and Regions Division is expected to outline its detailed job cut plans within the next month, and meetings in areas with modest redundancies, Sport and Professional Services for example, will follow.

Despite lifting the threat of strike ballots, unions have warned that industrial action will be back on the agenda if divisional-level negotiations do not lead to redeployment and re-skilling dramatically reducing the number of redundancies, or if agreement cannot be reached on the pension changes and unpredictability payments.