Action threat at Scottish TV

Members at Scottish TV and subsidiary Grampian could go on strike as the company tears up union agreements.

A site meeting in Aberdeen on 20 January, has already called for a strike ballot in protest at company plans to cut wages of some staff by up to £10,000 a year. A further meeting in Glasgow on 25 January is expected to vote the same way. Days before the Aberdeen meeting the union was given notice by Scottish of the company's intention to withdraw from collective agreements on wages and conditions. The company made the move in order to impose a pay cut on more than 100 "red-ringed" staff whose salaries are still paid in accordance with a previous wage agreement.

All of the staff affected were given protected status when the wage agreement was re-negotiated in the early 90s to allow new staff to join below the rates which applied at the time. They have now been given less than a month to decide whether to accept the pay cuts which take their wages down to the new staff rate, or opt for a severance package and leave their jobs.

BECTU has challenged this deadline on the grounds that the "red-ringing" arrangement is covered by the union's collective agreement with Scottish which requires three months notice of termination.

Scottish TV in fact served the necessary three months notice on the collective agreement at the same time as warning the union about the threatened pay cuts on 18 January. New wage rates provided by consultants Towers Perrin were presented with the explanation that they were "market median" rates for the industry.

The company also took the opportunity to announce that all in-house TV directors would be made redundant and replaced by freelancers, and that there would be significant reductions in the number of staff producers.

Scottish has been in the news recently after purchasing Chris Evans' Ginger Group for more than £200 million. Observers believe that the move was opposed by Granada Media Group, which has been building up a stake in Scottish as part of the take-over manouevring going on in ITV between the four top companies.

BECTU has warned Scottish that the management's proposals are unacceptable, and has called for an extension to the notice period being given to the "red-ring" staff. Further discussion may take place after the Glasgow meeting on 25 January, however the union believes that the company has ignored the agreed procedure for handling disputes. This would leave the union legally free to go ahead with an industrial action ballot without further negotiations.