BBC staff set to strike over 4,000 job cuts

Thousands of BBC journalists and technicians were tonight preparing to stage the biggest strike to hit the broadcaster in more than a decade, causing huge disruption to radio and TV programmes.

Union leaders said flagship programmes including tomorrow’s Radio 4 Today and World At One and BBC2’s Newsnight will not be broadcast because of the 24-hour walkout which starts at midnight.

Five 5 Live will also be badly hit and regional news bulletins are expected to be cut from 30 minutes to just a few minutes.

The National Union of Journalists, BECTU and AMICUS said they expected 11,000 workers to join the walkout.

Picket lines will be mounted from midnight at Bush House in central London and BBC TV Cntre in Shepherds Bush.

Journalists and technical staff across the UK will join picket lines outside regional BBC offices from 5.30am tomorrow.

Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ, said it would be the biggest strike against the BBC in living memory as part of protests against controversial plans to axe 4,000 jobs.

“It will be a massive display of anger across the BBC at the scale of the impact of these cuts. Workers will give a clear demand that managers should start listening to their concerns,” said Mr Dear.

“We have made it clear we will not accept cuts which decimate programmes, devalue the BBC, shortchange licence fee payers, increase pressures on staff and worsen working conditions.”

BECTU said it believed tomorrow will be the best supported strike in the history of the BBC because workers believed management were wrong in trying to cut so many jobs.

The NUJ and BECTU said they had recruited 2,000 new members between them since BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced the job losses in March.

Mike Smallwood, national officer of AMICUS said: “The savage cuts proposed will damage programming as well as the organisation and will unravel British broadcasting traditions.

“The BBC is a unifying British institution which acts as the nation’s conscience but these redundancies will damage the UK at its core.”

The BBC has warned the unions that by taking industrial action they were putting at risk the corporation’s relationship with the public.

“Industrial action will not remove the need for further consultation or the need for the BBC to implement changes which will enable us to put more money into improved programmes and services,” the BBC has said in a statement.

The BBC has said it will do everything it can to broadcast programmes tomorrow.

Mr Thompson sent a special message to staff on Friday saying he wanted to return to negotiations with the unions as soon as possible.

He said he recognised that tomorrow will present “difficult choices” for those who had voted to strike as well as for those who had not.