The National Union of Journalists held their second 24-hour strike yesterday against compulsory redundancies at the BBC. The action received massive support from its 3,000 members.
Up and down the country, journalists walked out to defend jobs and the quality of BBC programming, including in Belfast, Glasgow, Hull, Brighton, Coventry, Stoke, Carlisle, suffolk, Leeds and Oxford.
At BBC Nottingham pickets were joined by supporters from the PCS and GMB trade unions and likewise at BBC Manchester.
The strike was so solid that the BBC was forced to transmit pre-recorded and repeat programmes.
News broadcasts across its television and radio network were disrupted, including the flagship Radio 4 Today programme.
NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet joined a picket line at TV Centre shortly after midnight.
She said journalists were angered at a ‘change in approach’ by the BBC to job cuts, with a number of compulsory redundancies already made and more expected in the coming weeks.
On the picket line outside Bush House in Aldwych, London, strikers said they are determined to win their dispute.
NUJ rep, part-time secondee at Bush House, Howard Zhang, told News Line that the journalists’ union will keep fighting until it achieves a negotiated settlement.
‘BBC management are making an idiotic stand when there is no need to,’ said Zhang.
‘Over one hundred staff have said they want to accept voluntary redundancy.
‘Yet management are forcing out those who don’t want to go, and continue to wage a disinformation campaign against the union.
‘Not surprisingly, our members are frustrated and very angry.’
The stoppage comes after four people were made compulsorily redundant from the World Service – with another 43 due to be sacked yesterday as a result of plans to axe 387 posts from across the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring after its funding was cut by government.
