Four BECTU BBC activists quit in bid to join NUJ

Four BECTU activists at the BBC have quit the broadcasting union and applied to join the NUJ – so they can take part in this week’s strike over pensions, according to The Workers United blog.

The four, who were members of the BECTU audio and music branch committee, are David Gallagher, who was joint branch secretary, Joti Brar, Tim Clarke, and Ben Toone. BECTU members are not taking part in the strike action after members voted to accept the latest pensions offer. NUJ members overwhelmingly rejected the deal in a ballot.

In an email to colleagues across the corporation, the four explained their decision: “The pensions issue is the most shocking and unreasonable assault ever made by BBC management on their staff...The current proposals mean a huge and unacceptable cut to the pensions of existing scheme members, and the imposition of inadequate stock market-dependent pensions for all future staff.”

The message to BECTU members says: “The BECTU leadership have effectively thrown in the towel and seem happy to let BBC management get away with their heist.”

They add: “The Bridlington agreement (by which trade unions agree not to poach each others' members) means we can't encourage you to leave one union and join another. But we can at least explain the reasons why we're doing so.”

The NUJ strike is on Friday and Saturday.

No Bush tucker: BBC canteen boycott

Staff at the BBC World Service headquarters in London are to boycott their canteen on Friday in protest at cuts to the service including the redundancy of union members.
Instead of lunching on the premises they will join the sacked workers for a rally and picnic outside Bush House.
Members of the NUJ and broadcasting union BECTU - which represents the canteen workers - will join the protest at noon.
The unions have also launched a petition calling on the sub-contractors Aramark to re-instate the canteen workers while negotiations continue.

BECTU: 'We'll back members who refuse to work with BNP leader on Question Time'

Broadcasting union BECTU says it will support any of its members who refuse to work on the 22 October edition of Question Time which will have BNP leader Nick Griffin on the panel.

BECTU general secretary, Gerry Morrissey said: “Contrary to what the BBC has said, the BNP is not a legitimate political party in our eyes. Its policies are directly opposed to the democratic principles which underpin our multi-cultural society and those policies should not be given airtime.

"The BNP’s constitution only permits white people to join the party; this fact speaks volumes about the BNP’s fascist policies and everyone who believes in democracy should be taking a strong stance against the BNP, rather than helping the party to spread its poison.”
BECTU represents production staff across all roles in broadcasting and has on previous occasions pledged to support any member who chooses, as a matter of conscience, not to work on output which either involves or promotes the BNP.

The union has reiterated that same commitment to support all members who choose not to work on the edition of Question Time if it goes ahead with a BNP representative on the panel. The union says it will also be lending its support to anti-fascist organisations who will be campaigning against Question Time’s plans to give the BNP airtime.

NUJ to lobby MPs over regional tv news

The NUJ and broadcasting union BECTU are to lobby UK MPs over the future of regional news and public service broadcasting on Wednesday 14 October at 3pm in Westminster.

The unions are campaigning against top-slicing the BBC licence fee and propose alternative means of funding independent news and current affairs on other channels.

'It was the public wot won it,' says BBC trustee

So it wasn't the frantic lobbying by the Newspaper Society and the likes of Trinity Mirror chief Sly Bailey that influenced the BBC Trust to block plans to beef up the BBC's websites with video reports. It was the public.
In a letter to MediaGuardian today, Diane Coyle, BBC trustee and chair of the Public Value and Fair Trading Committee, disputes claims made last week by Bectu's Mark Scrimshaw that the BBC Trust was "beholden to commercial interests".
She says of the decision to instruct BBC management to drop plans for a broadband local video service: "The major reason for our decision was the evidence that such a service would not meet the demand for better local news. The public mainly want this news on radio and TV, not via the internet, and we have asked BBC management to bring forward new proposals to meet that demand. In reaching our decision we, of course, took account of representations from existing local media providers, and gave them appropriate weight - as the BBC Charter instructs us to do - but it was the views of the public that carried the day."

Bectu blast for Guardian and BBC Trust

Mark Scrimshaw, chair of broadcasting union Bectu's BBC Division, gives the BBC Trust and The Guardian both barrels today over the Trust's decision to block BBC plans to beef up its local websites with video reports.
Scimshaw, in a letter published in MediaGuardian, claims the Trust "has shown itself to be craven and pusillanimous, more beholden to commercial interests than any idea of public service broadcasting." He doesn't spare The Guardian, arguing it should have declared an interest in its coverage of the story because it is part of Guardian Media Group which owns a string of local papers, including the Manchester Evening News. Scrimshaw adds: "It (The Guardian) represents one of the main players to gain from the lack of competition thus created, and will be able to continue to get away with lamentable quality and exploitative wages and conditions...The losers from all this are staff in English Regions particularly, who will now face swathes of redundancies; and viewers, who will have to put up with the pitiful offerings of local newspapers' online video rather than a BBC alternative."