Nov Meeting - Speaker Luke Crawley - BECTU

24 November 2012

Bullet points from Luke's speech & Question & Answers and also from the floor as follows:

• Freeze of licence fee the most disastrous decision made.
• World Service, Monitoring + S4C all previously funded by Goverment now under BBC juristriction & budget from 2014.
• Therefore huge cuts within the budget to accommodate this.
• Murdoch discredited & gone yet cuts still strong.
• Asian Network heavily affected with redundancies - BBC pushing redundancies across the board - BECTU taking action for their members.
• BBC campaign in Birmingham - fronted by Branch Sec Tracey Briggs - when pointed out that Birmingham 2nd city over Bristol & Salford - BBC dismissive.
• Director General income gone from £850,000 - to £450,000 - what will new DG Tony Hall be on?
• 3/4 of Britains watch SKY - not just sport but the BBC channels as well - yet BBC PAYS SKY to broadcast!
• In America FOX TV pay the Public Broadcaster.
• In France - Sarkozy has put a levy on mobile phone coverage of 1/2% that goes back into the film industry.
• BECTU wriiten to Government to reconsider Licence Fee - no answer.
• Have to support the BBC & fight the corner of Public Broadcasting & we as a Trade Union alongside BECTU need to show our support.
• Concern / hope that Labour will change things - recent meeting of Branch Member with Shadow Arts minister Da n Jarvis showed that didn't take the Arts seriously.
• Football Association - joined with Equity under FEU - they don't need public funding.
• New changes to Terms & Conditions  for new employees means: Min 40 hours - NO overtime pay after that. Affects make up & wardrobe workers hugely - always the 1st to be on set & the last to leave. Have only just got 'box money' ie payment for their supplies etc - prior to this, paid for it themselves.
• BBC Drama - farmed out to Independent Producers -  25% BBC - 70% Independents. What inflluence does the BBC  have? -  PACT agreement. is the most used & the best agreement for our members.
• BBC - have 2  agreements one for night &  one for day - there is no law that says you HAVE to pay overtime - House Agreements can overide Terms & Conditions of overtime.
• Should be more contact / connection between our unions in the Federation - trickier for actors as only usually on set for 1 - 2 days - friendly & get on professionally but unable to bring up more important views that affect all.
• WAY FORWARD - Conservative party against public money going into ANYTHING - irrespective whether it is making money. Only invest in private resources.
• Arts Council invested heavily in Royal Opera, ENO  & RSC plus enormous amount of private sponsorship.
• Conservative philosophy - Flagship companies should be protected to the detriment of smaller companies.
• Once Tony Hall (new DG) on board & Saville Enquiry has moved on - we should strongly question the BBC & ALL political parties - "What are you doing for the Arts".