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July 14, 2005updated 22 Nov 2022 4:07pm

NUJ anger at BBC bonuses

By Press Gazette

By Caitlin Pike

The NUJ has called for members of the BBC’s executive board –
including deputy director general Mark Byford and director of
television Jana Bennett – to follow director-general Mark Thompson and
decline bonuses totalling more than £500,000.

The corporation’s annual report reveals that the 16 members of the
executive committee – made up of the BBC’s heads of department –
received increases in their total pay ranging from 4.5 per cent to over
15 per cent on top of inflation.

This comes at a time when up to
4,000 members of staff at the BBC, including hundreds of journalists,
face losing their jobs as part of cost-cutting measures implemented by
Thompson.

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said: “These people
should be ashamed. Managers should not be rewarding themselves at a
time when their staff fear for their jobs.

We welcome Mark Thompson’s decision not to take his bonus but the rest must follow suit.”

A senior BBC journalist told Press Gazette: “People are seething.

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The
argument that the BBC has to compete with the private sector doesn’t
hold. We’re all on lower wages than journalists at Sky and ITV so why
should the managers be any different?”

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