Post by Teddy Bear on Aug 31, 2011 17:07:30 GMT
This perfectly highlights the BBC mindset. They justify cutting out programming and award themselves more money. They feel entitled to take £32.5 MILLION a year in extra allowances calling it a 'flexibility allowance' despite none of the other media groups paying such a thing.
The licence fee is just the opportunity for these greedy pigs to give less and grab more. It also highlights the lily livered government and ignorant public that continues to feed it
The licence fee is just the opportunity for these greedy pigs to give less and grab more. It also highlights the lily livered government and ignorant public that continues to feed it
BBC staff earn £32.5m a year in extra allowances
The BBC pays £32.5 million a year in extra allowances to more than 8,000 employees whose hours of work are deemed unpredictable because they “only” receive two weeks’ notice of their shift patterns.
The BBC logo is displayed on entrance gates to Television Centre on October 18, 2007 in London
BBC staff can pocket an extra 10 per cent of their salary as a bonus if they are notified of their precise hours of work 14 days in advance
By Patrick Foster
7:00AM BST 30 Aug 2011
Staff at the corporation can pocket an extra 10 per cent of their salary as a bonus if they are notified of their precise hours of work 14 days in advance, while those signed up to receive one week’s warning of their shifts receive an extra 20 per cent.
The BBC says that 8,323 staff receive the pay supplement, also known as flexibility allowance, with the majority thought to be based in the corporation’s news division.
But neither ITN, nor Sky News, the BBC’s television news rivals, offers the payments to their employees, while working flexible hours is likewise seen as inherent to the jobs of national newspaper journalists, who do not receive pay supplements.
Senior executives at the BBC admit that the allowances are embarrassing and should be scrapped under a review of the corporation’s spending that is expected to be published in October.
The corporation has accepted a licence fee freeze until 2017 and is trying to find savings of 20 per cent, via measures such as relinquishing exclusive coverage of Formula 1 and cutting the remit of BBC Four.
One senior official close to the spending review said: “These payments are a hangover from the past and are likely to be phased out as a result of the cuts. The whole thing needs to be modernised and made much easier to understand.”
Staff have warned that the corporation will face a battle with unions if it wants to remove the payments.
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, which has already held two strikes this year over redundancies, said: “It comes as no surprise that the BBC wants to take away these allowances because management have been trying to claw back money from hard working staff for years.
"The current allowance is a key part of the employee pay package because the BBC pay rates are so low. Journalists starting out at the Corporation earn as little as £20,733.”
Even if executives manage to scale back the payments, past experience shows that gradually removing such allowances is a long and drawn out process.
The BBC announced in 1989 that it would phase out extra payments made to staff for working at the weekend, but figures seen by the Daily Telegraph show that 22 years later there are still 29 employees remaining who earn up to £2,000 a year on top of their salaries purely for working at so-called “unsocial” times.
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said that the BBC should scrap the allowances. “There are quite a large number of jobs out there that work on a shift basis with even less notice, yet they don’t get these kind of bonuses or extra payments,” he said.
“The great need that the BBC has, and which it says it is following, is transparency on salaries. I would hope that this would be an area in which instead of having a salary with bonuses on top that you should have a consolidated salary that fairly reflects the needs of the job.”
A spokesman for the BBC said: “We are looking at these allowances as part of the overall Delivering Quality First process but no decisions have been made yet.”
The BBC pays £32.5 million a year in extra allowances to more than 8,000 employees whose hours of work are deemed unpredictable because they “only” receive two weeks’ notice of their shift patterns.
The BBC logo is displayed on entrance gates to Television Centre on October 18, 2007 in London
BBC staff can pocket an extra 10 per cent of their salary as a bonus if they are notified of their precise hours of work 14 days in advance
By Patrick Foster
7:00AM BST 30 Aug 2011
Staff at the corporation can pocket an extra 10 per cent of their salary as a bonus if they are notified of their precise hours of work 14 days in advance, while those signed up to receive one week’s warning of their shifts receive an extra 20 per cent.
The BBC says that 8,323 staff receive the pay supplement, also known as flexibility allowance, with the majority thought to be based in the corporation’s news division.
But neither ITN, nor Sky News, the BBC’s television news rivals, offers the payments to their employees, while working flexible hours is likewise seen as inherent to the jobs of national newspaper journalists, who do not receive pay supplements.
Senior executives at the BBC admit that the allowances are embarrassing and should be scrapped under a review of the corporation’s spending that is expected to be published in October.
The corporation has accepted a licence fee freeze until 2017 and is trying to find savings of 20 per cent, via measures such as relinquishing exclusive coverage of Formula 1 and cutting the remit of BBC Four.
One senior official close to the spending review said: “These payments are a hangover from the past and are likely to be phased out as a result of the cuts. The whole thing needs to be modernised and made much easier to understand.”
Staff have warned that the corporation will face a battle with unions if it wants to remove the payments.
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, which has already held two strikes this year over redundancies, said: “It comes as no surprise that the BBC wants to take away these allowances because management have been trying to claw back money from hard working staff for years.
"The current allowance is a key part of the employee pay package because the BBC pay rates are so low. Journalists starting out at the Corporation earn as little as £20,733.”
Even if executives manage to scale back the payments, past experience shows that gradually removing such allowances is a long and drawn out process.
The BBC announced in 1989 that it would phase out extra payments made to staff for working at the weekend, but figures seen by the Daily Telegraph show that 22 years later there are still 29 employees remaining who earn up to £2,000 a year on top of their salaries purely for working at so-called “unsocial” times.
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said that the BBC should scrap the allowances. “There are quite a large number of jobs out there that work on a shift basis with even less notice, yet they don’t get these kind of bonuses or extra payments,” he said.
“The great need that the BBC has, and which it says it is following, is transparency on salaries. I would hope that this would be an area in which instead of having a salary with bonuses on top that you should have a consolidated salary that fairly reflects the needs of the job.”
A spokesman for the BBC said: “We are looking at these allowances as part of the overall Delivering Quality First process but no decisions have been made yet.”