We won’t be offshored, say BBC journalists

THE SOUTH Asia chapel of the BBC World Service has unanimously voted to ballot for strike action over managers’ moves to offshore most of the broadcasting to the Indian sub-continent.

Talks between the World Service senior managers and NUJ and BECTU representatives ended in early July with failure to agree over a plan to ask journalists to choose between redundancy in the UK and working in “countries where they came from” at grossly reduced pay and conditions.

Under this money-saving plan the BBC wants to transfer 50 to 80 per cent of Hindi, Urdu and Nepali services to Delhi, Islamabad and Kathmandu respectively.

Despite fierce opposition from both unions the BBC decided to push ahead with their plan unilaterally.

A Parliamentary Early Day Motion tabled by Respect MP George Galloway opposing the off-shoring is winning support across party lines. It expresses “grave concern” at the BBC’s contract with Pakistan’s Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) under which pre-recorded bulletins could be vetted before going on air.

George Galloway joined the campaigners at a weekly “flower protest” outside Bush House, the London headquarters of the service. The protest was in its ninth week as the Journalist went to press and is supported by colleagues from the English language newsroom and other language service colleagues who see the plan as a threat to BBC values.

The PEMRA contract, in the journalists’ opinion, shows the risks of moving to countries where BBC output could be subject to local censorship and political and commercial pressures.

BBC managers say the policy is a business need and programming would benefit from being closer to their audience. The NUJ says that the BBC’s worldwide reputation is due to its independent and objective voice — a voice in danger of being lost forever in the chatter of multitudes of local FM radio stations.

The Journalist is published by the National Union of Journalists