Double money for BBC chiefs
The storm over the ‘fat cat’ salaries paid to the BBC’s top bosses comes from frustration among its staff, says TIM GOPSILL. The corporation should listen to what the unions say.
THE BBC’s workforce is the best friend it has got, but like a lot of best friends it is sometimes taken for granted. Its advice is ignored, its loyalty is tested. That’s why the unions reacted so angrily in July when the BBC blithely released the figures in its annual report showing that the top bosses had pay rises of double those of the rest of the workforce.
Staff had a rise of 4 per cent this year, while the wage bill for the top BBC executives rose by 8 per cent, from £4.25 million to £4.96 million. Add their bonuses and the ten top bosses shared £5.8 million between them.
The top pay rise — £107,000, which boosted his salary by 30 per cent — went to Ashley Highfield, director of future media and technology, who left to run a commercial rival. Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, whose position includes responsibility for the fixed phone-in rackets exposed during the year, saw her total pay increase by 24 per cent to £536,000. This included a bonus of £23,000.
It was explained that the bonuses can be up to 10 per cent of salaries, set against pre-determined targets, and Jana Bennett’s had been reduced by 40 per cent as a result of the scandals. What was not explained was why such a system — bonuses of up to 10 per cent on top of salaries according to performance — should not be applied to the rest of the staff, and not just the ones who make the programmes and bulletins, but everyone?
This year’s bonuses varied from £17,000 to £81,000. Director-General Mark Thompson wisely decided to waive his own, but the other directors did not — prompting NUJ broadcasting official Paul McLaughlin to brand their conduct “shameful.” He said: “BBC staff have seen their workloads increase and thousands of jobs cut. Management should have the decency to show restraint at a time when so many workers are under huge pressures following cutbacks.”
All this came out against the background not just of the fixed pay rise for staff — the second stage of a deal concluded a year ago — but the massive job losses they are suffering. The BBC has axed around 4,000 jobs since 2005. Currently 2,500 are being eliminated, including 1,800 redundancies, after last year’s lower than expected licence fee settlement — though union officials are constantly negotiating fewer forced redundancies; two jobs were saved in current affairs in June.
Members are always telling the union of ways they are having to cut corners in order to make smaller budgets go further to meet the demand for multi-media working and for high quality programmes. It is hard-pressed staff who have to make the cuts work and the top executives who get paid for them.
NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear puts it like this: “Who does Mark Thompson think actually makes the change happen, who does he think works in the integrated newsroom, who does he think is having to cope with huge technological changes and fewer resources to do their jobs? Is it one law for them and another one for us? We’ll be looking forward to the next pay negotiations when our members who have taken on extra responsibility will surely be similarly rewarded.”
Don’t forget that it was Mark Thompson who blew the licence fee negotiations with the government two years ago. He so annoyed the then Chancellor Gordon Brown with his amateurish bluffs and threats that during the long negotiations the amount actually fell. And the BBC is still increasing its income: the annual report showed that its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, enjoyed profits up by 17 per cent last year to £118 million last year.
Finance does matter, because the BBC at present is having to fend off calls for part of the licence fee income to be “top-sliced” — siphoned off — to pay commercial broadcasters to continue airing “public service” programming. The NUJ is against this because the licence fee is what the public pays for the BBC, in return for which the BBC is — theoretically — accountable to the public.
So when it comes out that the BBC is paying double increases to its top bosses and cutting staff and programme budgets, well, it doesn’t help. Jeremy Dear says: “BBC management are scoring own goals. If, while dishing out executive rewards, the BBC fails to properly motivate staff and give them the resources needed to maintain the case for the unitary receipt of the licence fee will be weakened. Perhaps fatally.”
Yet again, the BBC really should listen to its best friend.