The National Union of Journalists in the UK have called a strike over compulsory redundancies on February 19, 2013. Many had even completed a 24-hour strike as they couldn’t reach an agreement with the management.
The issue was regarding redeploying 30 staff members who were made redundant. This had an effect on BBC’s radio and television programs. The Today show was dropped and its slot was filled by repeats and short news. On television, BBC Breakfast was handled by one presenter, instead of its regular Salford hosts. Radio 5 Live too went under the axe. It’s Up All Night and Morning Reports were dropped.
Radio 4 news programs like The World At One, The World Tonight and PM got affected as well. Compulsory redundancy might strike the Asian Network and the World Services, even as a BBC spokesman apologized for the disruption of service. He said the corporation is disappointed with the strike. The BBC office ran rolling updates of the affected programs and changed the schedule of programs.
The corporation would be downsizing 2000 jobs over 5 years in order to meet quality requirements. It remains to be seen how the BBC network would be affected in the long term as a result of these strikes.
