strike knocks flagship shows off air
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ThE MaStEr
2010-11-05
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Strike knocks flagship shows off air
November 5th, 2010
Thousands of BBC journalists walked out this morning in a 48-hour strike over pensions, in a move that knocked some of the broadcaster’s flagship shows off air. The walkout by around 4,000 members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) began at midnight UTC and was expected to cause major disruption, with television and radio shows enjoyed by millions pulled entirely or cut back.
Radio Four’s flagship “Today” programme, which has about 6.5 million listeners each morning, did not go out this morning, replaced instead by a series of pre-recorded shows. Meanwhile the BBC’s rolling news channel was expected to be restricted to regular updates, possibly as short as two minutes, with the rest of the channel filled by repeats, reports said.
Picket lines will be mounted at BBC offices across the country in the first of two strikes planned for this month, with the second due to take place on November 15-16. Negotiations about proposed pension changes between BBC journalists and management broke down last month, with 70 percent of the NUJ’s members voting against the broadcaster’s latest offer on pensions.
At the heart of the dispute are the BBC’s plans to reduce a pensions deficit of £1.5 billion ($2.4 billion, €1.7 billion) by capping increases in pensionable pay. “NUJ members across the BBC have consistently dubbed the proposals a pensions robbery,” said NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear. “That hasn’t changed. The BBC have now left members with no choice but to take action to defend their pensions.”
In a statement, the BBC said it was “disappointed” at the strike, particularly as four other unions had agreed a deal, adding: “It is the public who lose out and we apologise to our audience for any disruption to services.”
In a message to staff, BBC chief Mark Thompson insisted the offer made to journalists was a “fair one.” The industrial action “may manage to take some output off the air or lower its quality,” he said. “But strikes aren’t going to reduce the pension deficit or make the need for radical pension reform go away.”
(Source: Reuters)
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