This is the text of a letter from the BBC to the three main broadcasting unions, BECTU, NUJ and AMICUS:

ACAS OFFER

I am writing to confirm the BBC's position and the framework we discussed at yesterday's meeting between the full time officials and Mark Thompson.

The BBC's conditional offer made at ACAS (attached) remains entirely unchanged. Nonetheless, we believe it was a useful meeting to discuss and clarify the process going forward and to confirm that we are working on the premise that we will operate within our existing Procedure Agreement throughout. We also discussed yesterday our joint concerns about timescales going forward.

The joint unions raised a number of concerns about the opportunity to have meaningful consultation at Divisional Level and the process for escalating any issues. As we discussed at the meeting, should the joint unions accept the ACAS offer, the BBC confirms:

•      Divisional meetings and trawls for volunteers (as described in the attached letter) will take place simultaneously.  Divisional trawls will take place after the unions have had a chance to consult their members on the ACAS offer and the Division has tabled their proposal to the unions. All parties supported the principle that trawls should be undertaken as soon as possible in order to release savings which could help with the possible future mitigation of compulsory redundancies.

•      Should there be a 'failure to agree' on any specific issue within a Divisional change plan, the matter in dispute can be referred to the National level as per our existing Procedure Agreement.

•      Although we believe that all issues relating to the change programme can and should be resolved within our normal agreed procedures, we are happy to agree that there should be one further meeting between the full time officials and Mark Thompson before the end of the year to discuss progress. We agreed that we would try to convene the meeting within 2 weeks of a request from the joint trades unions.

The BBC appreciates that, given their content and scope, the Divisional change plans represent some difficult challenges for the unions and the staff.  The BBC has every intention of meeting its legal and union agreement obligations and we believe that the above framework gives all parties a workable structure for ensuring there is detailed consideration of the proposed changes at the appropriate level.

I look forward to receiving the joint unions' response.

This letter has been sent to all three recognised trades unions.

Yours sincerely





Gillian Alford
Head of Employee Relations & Policy

This is taken from the 4 Regional Film and Video web site:


10 June 2005
BBC peace offer to go to union ballot

Industry union Bectu plans to run a consultative ballot of BBC members on a package tabled at ACAS after the May 23 strike.
The package includes a promise of no compulsory redundancies until July 2006, a commitment to protection of terms and pensions for staff affected by the privatisation of BBC Broadcast, and a two-year halt to the sale of BBC Resources.
Officials announced that a ballot would be run just a day after BBC Director-General Mark Thompson agreed to a framework for future discussions on his plan for 4,000 job cuts, which had been a main factor behind the one-day strike in May.
In face-to-face talks with the DG on June 8, officials from BECTU, journalists' union NUJ, and Amicus, agreed (subject to members accepting the ACAS formula) to allow trawls for redundancy volunteers in areas hit by job cuts, in return for divisional-level negotiations on the scale of the cuts, and the impact on staff who remain.
The discussions were held at the request of unions following all-night talks at ACAS in late May which resulted in a peace formula, but left officials and members with concerns about the "scale and impact" of redundancies.
At ACAS the BBC had tabled an offer which included a promise of no compulsory redundancies before July 2006, and a framework for discussion of detailed plans for cuts within each of the BBC's 14 divisions.
Mr Thompson confirmed at the June 8 discussions that he was willing to meet the unions again before the end of the year to review the outcome of the divisional talks on job cuts, and acknowledged that the avoidance of compulsory redundancies was high on the unions' agenda.
Industrial action has been suspended to allow the volunteers' trawl and the promised divisional-level discussions, but could be resumed with seven days notice if any attempt was made to impose compulsory redundancies.
To deal with members' concerns that too many redundancies could put an extra burden on staff who remain working for the BBC, unions gave the BBC notice that work-to-rule protests could be organised if managers release too many volunteers.
Bectu has to run three separate ballots of members, to cover the BBC itself, and the two subsidiaries threatened with privatisation - BBC Broadcast and BBC Resources - where members joined the strike action on May 23.
Ballot papers will not, however, be sent out until the BBC has officially confirmed that staff in BBC Broadcast have guarantees that, if their company is sold, there will be no changes in terms and conditions for three years, no compulsory redundancies for 12 months, and access for current staff to a final salary pension scheme broadly comparable to the BBC's own.
The sale of BBC Broadcast is well-advanced, and the BBC has already reduced the long list of interested buyers to a shortlist of only four companies.
For staff in Resources, which was also marked down for privatisation when Mark Thompson announced his new vision for the BBC in December 2004, the BBC is offering that there should be no sell-off, wholly or in part, until July 2007 at the earliest, and has also confirmed that if the ACAS package is accepted, the process of preparing for a sale will be abandoned completely until January 2007.
BECTU hopes to conclude its ballots by the end of June, and will be recommending that members should accept the BBC's ACAS offer, with the subsequent qualifications from the DG, as the best outcome that can be achieved without further, and potentially extended, industrial action.
The two smaller BBC unions are likely to ballot their members on the offer, although the NUJ journalists' union has reported that it plans a meeting of representatives on June 15 before proceeding.
(GB)