Members of the ESPG Branch Committee are organising the social for all current staff, as well as spouses, partners, colleagues, and many retired staff.

Download the invitation [49Kb pdf]

The party is a follow-on from the “official” farewell in a studio earlier that evening,  which is open only to existing staff.

The union will be buying members their first drink, and it is hoped that entertainment will be laid on at the event, due to start at about 1930 on June 16th. The Club bar is scheduled to close at midnight – one hour later than normal.

More than 100 staff are leaving Studios and Post as a the result of a cost-saving restructuring, not counting more than 90 others who have been TUPE transferred back into the BBC.

Text of the invitation to branch members:

As you probably know by now, there is a farewell party on the evening of June 16 to say goodbye to over 100 staff who are leaving due to redundancy.

We’re planning to continue the party that evening in the BBC Club at TV Centre, and an invitation is attached. It will be open to all Studios & Post staff, but union members will have the added advantage of a free drink.

Partners, spouses, colleagues, and retired staff are all welcome.

Among the modest entertainment we hope to lay on is a collection of historic photos capturing the work of members in Studios and Post over the years. If anyone has material that could be included, please contact one of the following:

• Tony Lennon (tony.lennon@mcr1.poptel.org.uk)
• Roger Mullins (bectthree@hotmail.com)
• Nick Carroll (nickespg@yahoo.co.uk)
• Henry Gibson (henry.gibson.email@googlemail.com)

However a handful of potential compulsory cuts is still being negotiated, and the union is not claiming that all cuts have been voluntary yet.

More than 90 of the Post staff who have left employment in BBC Studios and Post Production (S&PP) were TUPE transferred into the BBC itself, after the union argued that although their sections, in Birmingham, Bristol and London Current Operations, were closing, their work would continue elsewhere in the Corporation.

The union has praised both management and local representatives for cooperating over the cuts, and coming up with cost-saving solutions that avoided compulsory redundancies.

Talks will continue over the unachieved redundancies, thought to be fewer than six, until a final review of the situation takes place in September 2009.

Meeting with management

BECTU representatives met BBC S&PP management yesterday (12 May 2009) for further discussions about company’s restructuring and job cuts.

It emerged at the meeting that, thanks to effort and imagination on both sides, the number of potential compulsory redundancies had been reduced to roughly half a dozen, most of them in the Post Production Assistant category.

Given the success to date of the joint union/management strategy of using redeployment, promotion, reorganisation, and other means of achieving cuts without compulsory redundancies, management were willing to defer any selection process in categories where there were too few volunteers in order for local discussions to continue.

The threatened compulsory redundancies have not formally been taken off the table, but no members are at risk at the moment, and by the time the union meets management to review the situation, probably in September, we hope that further cuts will have been achieved by voluntary means.

Members who volunteered for redundancy, whether or not there were job cuts in their categories, will now be approached by management to establish whether or not they are still interested in leaving.

No promise has been made that any staff will be allowed to leave, but management want to examine each application case-by-case to determine whether the company could get by without the individual, provided money could be found for redundancy payments etc.

The company said yesterday that it was possible that a budget could be found for some redundancies.

Deteriorating position

BECTU raised the question of the “preferred suppliers pool”, and the planned use of employment agencies to engage some categories of staff who are not defined as Schedule D tax-payers by HRMC.

We have been promised a written explanation of how the system will work, and hope to report more fully to members once we have sight of it.

Management emphasised at the meeting that the process of change within the company will continue, driven partly by the deteriorating trading position of Studios and Post, where work is apparently drying up almost on “a daily basis”, as the union was told yesterday.

Branch Representatives are already expecting discussions on scheduling practices in Post Production, and although the union has not yet been alerted to further job cuts by management, it is reasonable to assume that the merger of Studios and Post could lead to further reductions among middle management and support staff.

Earlier this year management renamed BBC Resources to become BBC Studios and Post Production, and reorganised the management structure.

The discussions over the cuts, which began in December 2008, have not only taken ESPG very close to the union’s objective of achieving any redundancies by voluntary means, but have also given an insight into the company’s detailed finances and trading challenges.

Union officials found examples where the costs of operating parts of the company on a commercial basis within the BBC were exorbitant, and instances where BBC producers were taking work was being taken outside, while the in-house facilities subsidiary sat idle.

Without intervention from the BBC, which is SS&P’s outright shareholder, the company will continue to struggle with rent charges that are far above market rate, and other imposed overheads that none of its competitors have to deal with.

At the highest level

BECTU now plans to raise, at the highest level within the BBC itself, the problems facing SSS&P, and will be proposing that the Corporation should take one of two strategic steps:

• Devise mechanisms and protocols which ensure that programmes do not take work out of house, or even do it themselves, unless the in-house company is at capacity.
• Acknowledge that programme departments are building up their own facilities bases locally, go on to close the corresponding, and competing, parts of Studios and Post, and TUPE transfer the staff affected back into the BBC.

The union knows this will jar with the company’s own hopes that an internal solution can be found within S&PP, which everyone obviously hopes will happen.

However the union representatives are now convinced that the problems facing the company are too severe to be solved by further cutting one of the few parts of its cost base where it has full control – namely the staff wage bill.

Union representatives will continue local discussion on the remaining few un-achieved redundancies, and there will be another report once the management/union review has taken place later in the year.

• The removal of  forward indicative patterns in schedules
• The ‘closing’ of hours worked to fit the booked time

The proposals [480k pdf] effectively brings to an end the notion of a set 12, 10 or 8 hour shift day and the ability to request a PD.

They have been made following the cuts across Studios and Post Production tabled late last year.

The increased timetable will allow further discussion with BECTU on a number of issues that the union believes will have an influence on individual decisions to volunteer.

The union successfully argued that in Bristol and Birmingham, there was a TUPE situation in which the work of staff facing redundancy would continue to be done inside the BBC.

As a result, the proposal for Post Production staff on these two sites is a TUPE transfer into the BBC, with the option of volunteering for redundancy before the transfer occurs.

Included in the proposal for Bristol and Birmingham is the provision for redundant staff to undertake work for the BBC as freelancers after leaving Resources Ltd, subject to an appropriate gap as required by the tax authorities. This relaxes the BBC’s rule requiring a 12-month hiatus on being re-hired after redundancy.

In London, however a request for a similar provision is still under discussion – while BBC Resources Ltd seems content to use redundant staff as freelancers after they leave, the BBC itself is determined that the 12-month rule should apply to non-Resources departments like BBC Vision.

The union fears that this may deter some staff, particularly in Post Production, from volunteering for redundancy, and has made strenuous efforts to win the waiving of the rule, with no success to date.

There is at least one area in London where a TUPE situation clearly exists – Current Operations within Post Production which is planned to close down.

The BBC has acknowledged that TUPE may apply, since most of the work the department is doing will continue somewhere in the Corporation, but there are no details yet as to the number of posts that may be appropriate to transfer back into the BBC.

Management have accepted that the six-month minimum notice period for redundancy which applies to areas which close completely, cannot be deemed to have started in Current Operations until the TUPE situation has been clarified, which they say is likely to consist of the approval of a finance case within BBC Information & Archives.

Talks have begun over other post closures in London – the next meeting with Studios management will be on January 5th, and with Post Production on January 6th. Dates for local meetings in Bristol and Birmingham are still to be confirmed.

A second meeting with company senior management will be held on January 9th, by when the union hopes that the position on the various issues listed above will be clear. Further developments before the first week of January are very unlikely, but there will be more to report after the meeting on 9 January.

For Resources staff who are taking time off over the Christmas/New Year period, we appreciate how unsettling it will be to have the prospect of voluntary or compulsory redundancies hanging over you.

However, the union is trying to ensure that:

• The number of redundancies is reduced wherever possible.
• Individuals have all the information they need to make a decision about volunteering.
• That all job cuts are voluntary if possible.

BECTU will be arranging further meetings for members to hear directly from the negotiating team, and dates will follow in early January.

BECTU has said these changes will be “of immense benefit to members” and are a “major step forward”.

Informal talks, following the meeting at which proposals were made for 210 job cuts in BBC Resources, have led to revised proposals:

• All staff in Bristol and Birmingham Post Production who want to TUPE transfer into the BBC will be allowed to, while those who do not will be free to volunteer for redundancy as part of a preference exercise.
• The BBC are still considering their position regarding Current Operations which may also fall under the TUPE regulations, and the union awaits details.
• BBC Resources, as a commercial subsidiary, has been deemed as exempt from the BBC 12 month moratorium rule, and subject to the usual hiatus that HRMC expects after workers are made redundant, ex-Resources staff will legitimately be able to undertake work at the BBC within the first year after redundancy.

Existing BBC rules means that nobody who is made redundant is allowed to return to the BBC in any capacity for 12 months – BECTU believes this could deter a significant number of volunteers for redundancy.

There are other areas in London where departmental closures mean that compulsory redundancies are threatened, and in some categories the scale of job cuts is so great they may not be achieved entirely by volunteers.

The union will therefore continue to demand that the remaining cuts are fully justified, both economically and strategically, from the BBC’s point of view, and has said it will not give up its demand that the BBC itself should make firmer commitments to Resources to secure its future.

Executives explained at talks on 1 December 2008 that a drop-off in work, partly due to cuts in BBC programme budgets, had led to the plan to shed almost one job in three at the TV facilities company.

For more details see bectu.org.uk.