The London based National Union of Journalists (NUJ) called for at least two 48-hour strikes to protest what it calls “draconian” pension reforms planned by BBC.
Last June, BBC announced plans to cut pensions to reduce its over $3 billion deficit.
“The proposals include closing the final-salary scheme [pension payout formula] to new joiners and imposing a cap on the amount pensionable salaries of existing members can grow by to 1 percent a year,” according to BBC.
NUJ says that under the current proposals, the journalist pension will lose a “significant part of its value,” with individual journalists losing hundreds of thousands a year.
BBC Radio’s daily current affairs show, the "Today Programme," was replaced on Friday by a satirist’s biography of Briton’s Uncle Sam equivalent, Lord Kitchener.
John Humphreys, the anchor of the "Today Programme," was absent from his hosting chair anyway, because he was in China researching a program for later broadcast. Much was made by the right-wing Times online that an article by Humphreys was published during the strike and the author received 5,000 pounds (US$8,000) for it.
The benefits problem aroused following a review of the pension scheme in 2006 showed that a deficit had gone up from 470 million pounds (US$760 million) in 2008 to about 2 billion pounds (US$3.2 billion), according to BBC reports.
Other unions in the BBC supported the strikes and will monitor their members in the next few weeks about what action they will take as they see their pensions similarly affected.
Another two-day strike is set for Nov. 15-16, and possibly more for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year's Eve and New Year’s Day.
