BBC Salaries - progress

[eighthobstruction]

....or sunrise....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....or sunrise....

[teamsaint]

....or sunrise....

[ahinton]

....or sunrise....

They're all more interesed in pay rise than sunrise, surely?

[eighthobstruction]

They're all more interesed in pay rise than sunrise, surely?

[P. G. Tipps]

...and without whom things keep going quite nicely. But take away the worker ants and see what happens..........

Yes, indeed ...

Which reminds me, I should be rather careful about referring to 'complainers'.

When I was employed by a top retail outfit ... which, out of the goodness of my little heart, will remain nameless ... a new colleague suddenly appeared on our department. We were subsequently advised by our obviously thrilled management team that the new guy had a host of qualifications and had been 'poached' from one of our main rivals. His addition to the team was apparently to boost levels of performance even higher. Yes, even higher, folks ... we got the message ... that's a real morale-booster, eh?!!

For some reason the new guy seemed to pick me out for conversation quite regularly and I thought he might just have been a bit lonely and, after all, he was new and in a strange environment, and, anyway, I always liked to make new guys (and gals, of course) feel welcome.

After a bit he started to press me on details of my salary. I suddenly realised that it wasn't friendship he was after, he had simply taken me for the department mug. Discussing salaries amongst staff was a sackable offence and, mug or no, I had absolutely no intention of being sacked. Times were tough enough.

When I refused his request he said he wished to discover whether he was on a lower salary than the rest of us. I replied that I didn't have the faintest idea and to my astonishment he then told me what he was on. I tried hard to keep my composure at what he told me and told him I didn't believe him. The following day he brought in his payslip. He clearly hadn't been lying. I 'hit the roof' so the new guy didn't really need to be told my own details which even I wasn't mug enough to reveal at any stage.

However I was undoubtedly somewhat angry ... shaking with rage might be rather more accurate ... so I arranged a meeting with other colleagues and told them the story. The following day there were then about six very angry members of loyal and well-established staff demanding a meeting with the Personnel Manageress & Store Director to find out what the heck was going on. Without going further with that side of the story, things were never quite the same again. Trust in management had been completely shattered. It never really recovered.

The wonderful new guy? Well, apart from committing one sackable offence it was then discovered the paper 'qualifications' he brought to his employment interview were forged by his wife who worked for a publishing company. So there's another. And then it was also discovered that he had been secretly leaking sensitive trade information to his original rival company where it transpired he was still employed on a part-time basis, so there's four for a start!

Understandably we never saw the guy again and we never got any sort of apology from management. It was as if nothing had actually happened. Just one of these things, you see.

Yes, in all honesty, with some experience of dealing with perfidious, double-dealing managements, I can well understand quite a bit of the current anger at the BBC ... extremely well indeed!

[oddoneout]

Presumably that was 'negotiated' at the very start between the two parties? Who knows what automatic annual increments he might receive as part of the contract.

Judging by what we now know the lucky Humphrys earns he has had very little need to ask the BBC for any sort of pay rise whatsoever. ..

It's not an uncommon situation that individuals don't need to ask for a pay rise - they can rely on the pronouncements of a suitably primed remuneration review body to do that for them. MPs do very nicely out of such an arrangement....In the meantime many at the bottom of the heap are stuck with perennial pay freezes and dependent on the annual increase in the NMW(or sometimes a windfall from EU legislation - hah!) to see any change in the figures on the pay slip.

[french frank]

And Catherine Bott went from the BBC to CFM, for whatever reason. Is she still there?

Yes, she is still there - and presenting The Full Works twice a week as well as Everything You Wanted To Know …

The reason doesn't take much guessing: Radio 3 lopped the Early Music Show programmes in half to save money. So presumably the two presenters had their pay halved or one gave the other a free run. Enter Classic FM.

[eighthobstruction]

It's not an uncommon situation that individuals don't need to ask for a pay rise - they can rely on the pronouncements of a suitably primed remuneration review body to do that for them. MPs do very nicely out of such an arrangement....In the meantime many at the bottom of the heap are stuck with perennial pay freezes and dependent on the annual increase in the NMW(or sometimes a windfall from EU legislation - hah!) to see any change in the figures on the pay slip.

....Yes I remember that feeling exactly at BBC Whiteladies Road the ACTT would call a meeting
to welcome an offer from the management....Two and a half percent....Up go the hands of Head of Wildlife/ Animal Magic, Head of Camera/Sound/etc etc all on £20k, £30k (1976)....my hands remained in my pockets....for someone on £50-75pw it definitely didn't seem much....it wasn't much....

[Lat-Literal]

Breaking news:

BBC pay - Anita Rani 'disappointed' by race and class gap - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40824357

But sadly no comment yet from Lenny Henry who is usually the first to speak on such matters. Quote: "After the publication, Sky News calculated that 45% of the BBC's best-paid stars were privately educated. Rani herself attended a private school - last year she told The Guardian she attended Bradford Girls Grammar, which was a fee-paying school until 2013." Bless!

As this spidery web continues to grow around Tony Hall's halo, it is time for separating the sheep from the goats. One, "Sky News calculated". Well, it would do, wouldn't it. Any predator not subjected to transparency or Freedom of Information laws will make hay while the dark sun is shining - at this rate until December. As an aside, I have now submitted the question of how much Government advertising is going into commercial radio and television (a) via the FOI mechanism and (b) via my well meaning and often very effective Conservative MP.

Neither mechanism has produced any answer so (c) will be to contact every individual Department. The taxpayers will "love" me but my message to them is I have no choice. No one knows centrally. least of all our eight times millionaire Chancellor. It's important that you know so future BBC assessments are understood in the light of massive handouts elsewhere.

Two, see how these people lure 98% of us into their trap. Feel so sorry - or we should do apparently - for anyone who is not a white middle class full bodied heterosexual male for not being in the £150,000 bracket at our expense. Pure hooey. Every point is in theory well made but it's a smokescreen on the differences with ordinary in-this-world levels. Consequently, in practice it is not well made at all. It is a gross diversion from what matters and, god forbid, it encourages an artificial sense of common identification. They are loaded. Geddit? Yes!

Three, yep, 46% of BBC presenters are allegedly of private school backgrounds. That means 54% are not so. Aside from the facts that this is probably outweighed by the private school skew among private operators and in line with almost everything else a switch backwards from the days when there were grammar schools, what is going to happen once this issue is addressed? We'll have a load of aw-gawd-blimeys on the Beeb to meet quotas and a private commercial sector that is so plummy 85% of the population will feel so alienated they'll cut.

Four, camera people, sound people and other technicians. They are used to doing what they do in the dark and often prefer it but in this war of the showy they have been reduced to non-existence. No news here about "talent" or the worry that it might go off in a huff to pastures new. It is assumed that they will stay, for better or for worse. Silent.......well, you never know and I'd say two thirds of the priority should be focussed there. In the seventies, technicians regularly went on strike and brought the entire lot down overnight. Just sayin'.