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BBC Unions strike ballot - 84% vote for action

Strikes: 23rd, 31st May and 1st June. (May 2005)

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IS
Inspector Sands
suziechan posted:
well i don't know who wrote that BBC Broadcast have been told they can't strike...both Broadcast and Resources received emails suggesting 'it would be better' if they didn't go on strike. but legally they can't discriminate against union members who go on strike...


Exactly, what management tell staff and what is legally the case can be totally diffrerent from what the law actually says. IMHO Legally there is very little to stop BECTU members at BBC-B striking or being fired after the event for not turning up.
NE
newsmonkey
noggin posted:
The last time there was a strike of this size - in June 1998 - all BBC One News programmes (Breakfast News, One/Six/Nine) and I think Newsnight were not broadcast. Instead News 24 was staffed by management and staff who chose not to strike, and BBC One carried half-hour bulletins instead, with pre-recorded shows in the back half-hours of Breakfast News? (Not sure if the service was combined with BBC World as well?)

This time round I would expect that things might well be similar.

It will be interesting to see what happens in BBC Broadcast - who have recently moved to a new transmission system (that managers may be less able to operate) - so the channel presentation may be interesting as well... (I think that many of BBC Broadcast's employees feel strongly that they don't want to be "sold off" - many chose to work for the BBC...)



But this strike is not at all comparable to the last - in this instance staff are protesting at national unilateral job cuts, for no reason other than to cut costs. At the same time there's the bubbling undercurrent of BBC Broadcast being sold off and the outsourcing of some other smaller departments (whose names escape me).

And in fact, AFAIK, the last Mori poll showed that the public were very much in favour of the strike and couldn't understand why so many thousands of jobs were being slashed.

James

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