BBC Staff Strikes Over Changes to Pension Plan

[Blue_Tires]

LONDON — Journalists at the British Broadcasting Corp. started a 48-hour strike Friday morning to protest planned pension cuts, causing some disruption to global programming.

About 4,100 BBC journalists, who are members of the National Union of Journalists, participated in the strike, or about 17 percent of the staff. Several live programs — ranging from the BBC World Service’s “The World Today” program to the local breakfast show, “Good Morning Scotland” — were replaced with pre-recorded shows.

The BBC director general Mark Thompson acknowledged that it “has been a difficult period” for BBC staff. “However, the people who lose out most in any strike action are the very people we are here to serve — our audiences,” he wrote on the BBC Web site on Friday.

The strikers are fighting a plan by BBC’s management that seeks to plug a pension funding gap, estimated at £1.5 billion, or $2.4 billion, without increasing fees for the BBC audience in Britain.

The union charged on its Web site that the new plan would result in BBC staff “paying more in contributions and working longer and getting less in retirement.” The change “fails BBC staff,” the N.U.J. general secretary Jeremy Dear said earlier this week.

The need to fill gaps in the schedule also lead to some awkward program choices. BBC World Television replayed an old program celebrating the third anniversary of the Airbus A380 — just a day after an engine failure forced a Qantas Airbus A380 to make an emergency landing.

The BBC said it anticipates “some disruption to the schedule” and apologized to its audience. BBC World Service has also been affected, though a spokesman said it was running a “near normal output.” The strike had no impact on its Web site so far, it said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/business/media/06bbc.html?src=busln