A new leaflet, Open Channel, has been issued by BBC staff against the pensions robbery.

Latest leaflet from BBC reps against the pensions offer

Under the name, Open Channel, a coalition of NUJ and Bectu reps are campaigning for a no vote in the ballot on the BBC’s latest pension offer.

Download a copy here to read and distribute to your work colleagues. Here are highlights of the leaflet below.


“We are a cross-section of union reps at the BBC and we think you should vote “No” in the consultative ballot on the BBC’s CAB 2011 pension plans.

Mark Thompson’s campaign to destroy the final Salary Pension Scheme is based on a sham.

A new estimate suggests that the deficit on the scheme is not £2 Billion. It is not £1.5 Billion. It has now been estimated at £1 Billion – that’s the level at which the Director General promised to reconsider the BBC’s options on the future of the pension scheme.

So, all bets are off. We call on the BBC to re-start negotiations from scratch. The reps’ decision to call this consultative ballot has given staff a chance to see even more of the flaws in the BBC’s plans.

We all have the right to demand that Mark Thompson offers us a pension which will allow us a decent, secure standard of living in retirement.

That’s what we were promised. So far, none of his alternatives to scrapping the Final Salary Pension Scheme gives us that.

“Was it part of the natural order that final-salary schemes would wither and die? Were they killed by incompetence and neglect? Or were they murdered?” from “Who Runs Britain” by Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor”

Vote NO because:

• CAB 2011 means staff will be expected to pay more, to work longer and get less back for their retirement.
• The BBC has refused to consider the unions’ calls to protect our pensions against rising costs of living in the future. You risk losing more than 20% of your pension to inflation under the current plan.
• The BBC’s “final” offer was no such thing. Negotiations are still going on and management have continued to amend key elements of their proposals.
• The new estimate of the pension deficit shows that senior management have used the deficit in a politically-driven attack to close down the Final Salary Scheme.
• BBC staff are not demanding “feather-bedding” or “gold-plated” pensions. The current average pension for BBC staff is £12,500. That’s somewhere between the pension of a fire-fighter and a police officer.

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Tags: BBC, NUJ, pensions