Victory for Engineering Training
The BBC has announced that plans to out-source Engineering Training have been scrapped after a long opposition campaign.
The welcome news came after rearguard campaign to prevent the department being transferred to Capita under Mark Thompson’s Value for Money programme.
Local campaigners, led by BECTU represntative Kevin Doig whose efforts to keep the section in-house became a regular editorial feature in Ariel, used staff petitions, letter-writing drives, and face-to-face challenges to top managers including Thompson himself, to press home the importance of Engineering Training.
Their efforts were enough to ensure that when a large part of Training’s home division, BBC People, was outsourced to Capita in April, Kevin’s area was given a three-month stay of execution while commercial negotiations continued over future training provision.
Only weeks later, the success of their campaign became clear when the BBC confirmed that the department would stay in-house, albeit subject to a shake-up that has yet to be discussed with the union.
BECTU swiftly congratulated the hundreds of members who had supported the fight to keep Engineering Training in the BBC, and urged other areas facing privatisation to take encouragement from an example where determination and persuasion among members had led to a management u-turn.