The news programmes of BBC ( British Broadcasting Corporation ) were disrupted on Monday as its journalists went on a second 24-hour strike over compulsory job cuts at the British broadcaster.
Members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) are angry at around 100 compulsory job losses at the World Service and Monitoring division, which monitors mass media worldwide, as the broadcaster seeks to make huge savings.
Some BBC programming including Radio 4’s ‘Today’ was affected after members of the NUJ began their strike at midnight.
The NUJ says the BBC is “unwilling to engage in finding reasonable resolutions” for those forced to leave and who face compulsory redundancy.
The BBC says it is unable to agree to demands for no compulsory redundancies.
Radio 4’s flagship show began an hour later while 5live played out pre-recorded programmes to replace its regular ‘Up All Night show’, BBC reported.
Its breakfast show was also presented by Ian Payne in place of regular host Nicky Campbell. BBC Breakfast was presented by one host instead of two and came from a different studio.
Today’s strike follows similar action on July 15 when licence fee payers experienced some disruption to output.
A BBC spokesman said at the time that the disruption had been less than expected.
Lucy Adams, the BBC’s business operations director, said in an e-mail to staff that the corporation had been in daily contact with the NUJ last week “in an attempt to resolve the issues they have raised”.
As well as being unable to agree to no compulsory redundancies, she said management were “unable to agree to NUJ members who are facing redundancy being treated differently to other BBC staff”.
“Following the cuts in Central government grants to the World Service and BBC Monitoring we have had to close 387 posts, meaning that, regrettably, there are nearly 100 staff who as a result are facing compulsory redundancy.
The NUJ accuses the BBC of “wasting thousands of pounds making skilled and experienced people compulsorily redundant instead of redeploying staff”.
