10 hours from a national stoppage
THREE THOUSAND BBC journalists came within ten hours of walking out on strike in protest at redundancies.
They had voted for action, in accordance with the NUJ’s policy of resisting all compulsory job losses at the corporation, over the World Service’s plan to axe posts in its South Asian section.
But the walkout was averted by last-minute talks in which the BBC agreed to further talks.
General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Negotiations often go quite close to the wire — but these almost went beyond. The night before we’d reached a stalemate and talks broke down at 1am. It looked like the strike was on. But an 11th hour meeting set out a process for avoiding compulsory redundancies.”
The BBC is planning to “offshore” its broadcasting in Hindi and half of its Urdu and Nepali output to production companies in India and Pakistan, at a cost of 34 editorial jobs in London. The unions have warned of a threat to editorial independence arising from broadcasting in unstable countries.
Journalists at the South Asia service took part in a 24-hour strike in February. Union leaders joined them picketing their Bush House headquarters in London.