The National Union of Journalists will call on the BBC Trust to cap the salary of director general Mark Thompson at around £200,000.
The annual delegate meeting of the NUJ today backed a motion demanding the Trust permanently links the salary packages of BBC executives to the salaries of other employees.
The union said it was “alarmed and dismayed” by the size of salaries of senior management at a time when the BBC was suffering severe cutbacks adding that it would campaign for pay-packets of the highest earning executives not to exceed five times the basic average salary of all full-time BBC staff.
Thompson’s total remuneration package in 2008/2009 was £834,000 – more than 20 times the average salary of a BBC employee.
The union echoed journalists at the BBC World Service and the corporation’s current affairs department who last week said they would hold a referendum over the salary of Thompson and other senior executives.
Pete Murray, NUJ national executive member, told delegates: “It’s very easy to make fun of the fat cats and their charging flowers to expenses but there is a serious point to this.
“It’s serious to the future of the BBC and the trust the public has in its institutions and the public service journalism they provide.
“If people outside in the real world thinks that everyone in the BBC earns the kind of money that Chris Moyles and Jonathan Ross do, or Mark Thompson does…It makes it easier for this government or the next to cut into the fund that keeps the BBC on the air. That is unforgivable.”
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