BBC facing strikes over 6,000 job cuts

BBC staff will be balloted for strike action within the next few days after last-ditch talks between union leaders and director-general Mark Thompson broke down.

Mr Thompson had taken the unprecedented step of asking for a face-to-face meeting with broadcast unions Bectu, the NUJ and Amicus over plans to axe up to 6,000 staff as part of ?355 million of budget cuts.

But the talks ended last night after more than three hours, with the BBC refusing to meet demands for a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.

Bectu national official Luke Crawley said: "The BBC rejected the proposals we put to them so we will be balloting our members for strike action.

"If members agree, we would be mounting industrial action as early as next month." He said the form of action had not yet been decided but could be anything from a 12-hour walkout to "a day or longer".

The unions had also requested a 90-day moratorium on imposing the cuts which the BBC says will free up cash for programme-making.

"We wanted the BBC to explain exactly how 80 per cent of the staff can do 100 per cent of the work," said Mr Crawley.

Union officials also wanted protection for staff whose jobs face outsourcing, such as those in BBC Broadcast and BBC Resources, both commercial divisions which are being sold off. But while BBC chiefs did offer a moratorium on the cuts, they refused to rule out compulsory job losses.

"They said they wanted to run a trawl for volunteers for redundancy first but we said there is no point if those people being trawled don't know how the land is going to lie afterwards," said Mr Crawley.

He said the mood of the meeting had "on the whole been positive", but insisted there would be no further talks.

"Despite the best efforts of both sides we failed to agree," he said. "The joint unions will now ballot for action."

The meeting, at the corporation's Media Centre in White City, was attended by the BBC's head of human resources Stephen Dando and head of employee relations Gillian Alford, as well as union leaders and BBC representatives from across Britain.

The unions had warned of a "stormy summer" of protests if the BBC refused to meet their demands. When Mr Thompson announced details of the cuts last month his plans were condemned as "ripping the heart out of BBC programme-making".

Confirmation of the ballot to strike comes after a weekend of industrial action against ITV. More than 700 Bectu and Amicus staff held a 36-hour walk-out over an offer of a 3.3 per cent pay increase.

The strike forced bosses to halt filming on Emmerdale and Coronation Street, and to pre-record Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. Unions have now agreed to consider a new, improved pay offer.