Thousands of BBC journalists in Britain walked out yesterday 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 0000 GMT and was expected to cause major disruption, with television and radio shows enjoyed by millions of Britons pulled entirely or cut back.
BBC Radio Four’s flagship current affairs programme, Today, which has about 6.5 million listeners each morning, did not go out yesterday, 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 are being 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 per cent 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 (€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 has now left members with no choice but to take action to defend their pensions.”
In a statement yesterday, 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.”
As part of the government’s massive programme of spending cuts, the BBC has agreed to take over funding of the World Service from the Foreign Ministry in return for a six-year freeze on the licence fee.
Every householder in Britain with a television or radio must pay the fee, which is the BBC’s principal source of funding.
Factbox
• The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the principal public service broadcaster in the UK. Its global headquarters are located in London, and its main responsibility is to provide public service broadcasting in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
• The BBC was the world’s first national broadcasting organisation and was founded on October 18, 1922 by a group of six telecommunications companies to broadcast experimental radio services. The first transmission was on November 14 of that year, from the Marconi House in London.
• BBC is the largest broadcaster in the world with about 23,000 staff.
• Within the UK, its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, charged to all UK households, companies and organisations using any type of equipment to record and/or receive live television broadcasts; the level of the fee is set annually by the British government and agreed by Parliament.
• In the UK, BBC One and BBC Two are the BBC’s flagship television channels. Several digital only stations are also broadcast: BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, BBC Parliament, and two children’s channels, CBBC and CBeebies.
• The BBC has five major national stations: Radio 1 (“the best new music and entertainment”); Radio 2 (the UK’s most listened to radio station, with 12.9 million weekly listeners); Radio 3 (classical and jazz music); Radio 4 (current affairs, factual, drama and comedy); and Radio 5 Live (24 hour news, sports and talk).
• In recent years some further national stations have been introduced on digital radio platforms, such as a network of local stations with a mixture of talk, news and music.