BBC World Service South Asia strike ballot

Text of a letter to BBC World Service members:

South Asia restructure - offshoring of production and staff
To all NUJ Members at World Service

Colleagues

I am writing to update you on the developing situation concerning World Service proposals to offshore jobs and production overseas in the Hindi, Urdu and Nepali services.

The NUJ has been in negotiations for some time concerning managements proposals. They form part of a wider strategy, within World Service management, to offshore more than 50% of production overseas.

The NUJ has raised concerns about this, not just from the point of view of members jobs, but also asking how editorial authority and impartiality would be maintained if the BBC shifts its editorial focus overseas, and crucially, out of Bush House where it has resided for more than seventy years.

The proposals for the South Asia services represent a significant shift away from London, both in terms of production and in terms of editorial control. During last year, we discovered that the arrangements for broadcasting within Pakistan where not sufficient to guarantee editorial control, and will remain concerned that non-BBC staff ,working for commercial limited companies overseas ( such as BBC India Ltd, etc), under questionable regulatory and political regimes, may not be able to uphold the BBC's hallmark of quality and impartiality.

During the course of our negotiations some changes where discussed however, these did provide sufficient guarantees in terms of production as outlined above, nor has there been any guarantee in terms of ruling out compulsory redundancy for staff in these areas.

Members roundly rejected managements plans in a consultative postal ballot returned by nearly 90% of members. World Service management have now decided to try and press ahead with its plans without the agreement of the staff involved or the NUJ.

In response to the this, the Union has issued notice to the BBC of our intention to ballot members, in this area, for strike action. Whilst this is something we do not do lightly, members feel it is a necessary step to protect the BBC's ability to remain impartial and to prevent management from imposing unacceptable solutions on our members.

The ballot will begin on Friday of this week and will end on Friday the 13th February 2009.

We will keep you updated. Please forward messages of support to Rajesh Priyadarshi rajeshpriyadarshi@gmail.com

Paul McLaughlin
National Broadcasting Organiser
National Union of Journalists