The BBC is to cut a further 1,700 jobs and freeze senior manager pay and bonuses for ‘top talent’ in an effort to save £400m and protect the programmes and services it offers, the organisation’s director-general, Mark Thompson announced yesterday.
Speaking at the Changing Media Summit in London, Thompson said that despite already cutting 7,200 jobs in the past four years, the BBC must now undergo a “bigger programme of restructuring and redundancy”.
This week, journalists at the BBC have also voted in favour of two national one-day strikes against compulsory redundancies, with the most urgent threat of compulsory cuts at the World Service’s South Asian section where up to 20 jobs are at risk.
Jeremy Dear, the union’s general secretary, said: “Once again NUJ members at the BBC have shown they will not accept compulsory redundancies.”
He added: “Journalists at the South Asian services have been fighting a heroic struggle against the outsourcing of their jobs, which will sacrifice editorial independence. Now they have the weight of thousands of NUJ members at the BBC behind them.”
