BECTU members outsourced to Capita are to strike because of the company’s refusal to allow them to continue working on the BBC contract.
Members voted by a 73 per cent majority for strike action which will take place on Friday 30 June 2006.
BECTU members from BBC Human Resources had asked Capita for a guarantee that they will be allowed to continue working on the BBC contract, following the outsourcing of the department in April.
In every other BBC outsourcing exercise, such as staff transferring to Land Securities Trillium or Siemens, the new company had agreed that, if staff could not be provided with BBC work, then redundancy would be an option for them.
Capita has refused to provide this guarantee and says it will redeploy staff onto other Capita contracts, which could mean working for clients such as Budgens or British Nuclear Group.
In addition, Capita intends to move dozens of jobs from all over the BBC to Belfast over the next eighteen months and, while they will not be insisting that staff relocate, they will not allow the affected staff to take redundancy instead.
There will certainly be a picket line outside the Media Centre in West London where many of the staff are based and other picket lines will be confirmed later.
BECTU will be issuing guidance to BBC members who may work in the same buildings as colleagues who are on strike.
Supervisory official Luke Crawley stated: ‘Capita should understand that members want to work for the BBC, directly or indirectly.
‘They did not ask to be outsourced and redundancy should be an option if BBC work cannot be guaranteed to them’.
