BBC boss appeals to staff ahead of strike

BBC director general Mark Thompson has made a last-ditch appeal to BBC employees ahead of tomorrow's strike.

At midnight tonight, members of the National Union of Journalists will start a 48-hour walkout after rejecting the BBC's final offer on changes to its final salary pension scheme.

In a email to employees - seen by The Guardian - Thompson claimed that the strike would result in a "significant loss of earnings" for NUJ members "without any advantage or benefit in return".

He also acknowledged that the strike would disrupt the BBC's news output, with BBC Two's Newsnight, BBC Radio Live and the BBC News Channel likely to be affected.

"The public - many of whom are facing difficult employment and economic pressures - will find it very hard to understand why the BBC's service to them should be impaired in this way," said Thompson.

The director general appealed to all non-NUJ members to take the "difficult and personal" decision to cross the picket lines and come into work.

"This is also the advice being given to members of other BBC unions by their own leadership," he said, referring to the decision by the Bectu, Unite and Equity unions not to strike.

"People who strike or those who choose not to cross picket lines will lose pay for the relevant day. The BBC belongs to the British public and has a duty to deliver programmes and services of the highest quality to them every day of the year. They rely on us. We must not let them down."

Thompson further claimed that the BBC's "fair" pension scheme offer had "changed in significant and positive ways" after negotiations with the unions, but no further concessions would be made.

"To have gone further would have been to risk damage to the quality of our services to the public and to jobs. The proposals we agreed with the unions some weeks ago were and will remain the BBC's final offer," he said.

"Some have argued that it would have been better if the whole question of pension reform had waited until after the formal valuation of the pension deficit had taken place. But the whole point of introducing the reforms now was so that the reforms could themselves be taken account of in the valuation process."

He added: "As a result of the reforms, the deficit will be significantly lower than it otherwise would have been and the BBC's payments to eliminate that deficit will also be lower. Had we waited, the impact on services and jobs across the BBC would have been much worse."

Earlier in the week, the NUJ called on the public to support BBC employees when they go on strike over what the union describes as "pensions robbery".