Hopes of next week's BBC strike being averted were raised today after both sides agreed to meet at the conciliation service Acas on Thursday.
The three unions - Amicus, Bectu and the NUJ - will discuss with a BBC management team the proposed job cuts that led to yesterday's strike taking the corporation's flagship TV and radio news programmes off air.
A further 48-hour strike is still planned for next Tuesday and Wednesday, but union officials said the fact the BBC had agreed to Acas talks suggested the director general, Mark Thompson, was willing to compromise on his earlier refusal to negotiate on plans to axe 4,000 jobs.
A BBC management team will meet with negotiators from the unions at Acas at 10am on Thursday.
"We welcome the invitation to talks at Acas. Clearly the BBC would not have agreed to go unless they were prepared to negotiate," said the Bectu assistant general secretary, Gerry Morrissey.
"We're expecting some kind of compromise from the BBC, but can't predict at this stage whether it will be enough to settle the dispute. If this does turn out to be a step forward, it will have been made possible by the overwhelming show of support from members for yesterday's industrial action."
The BBC said: "We can confirm that we have accepted an invitation today from Acas to meet the unions at their offices on Thursday."
Earlier today Mr Thompson told the Westminster Media Forum he was keen to restart talks with the unions and suggested he was willing to be "very flexible" - in contrast to his more intransigent statements during the strike yesterday.
"We want to get back around the table as soon as possible but without any pre-conditions attached by any side," he said.
"We can't make the need for change or its scale go away, but we're prepared to be very flexible about how we go about it. We have set out a plan for the future and a budget for the BBC over the next few years, and we can't unwish that," Mr Thompson added.
The unions said they went on strike because BBC management refused to guarantee there would be no compulsory redundancies. They say they can achieve Mr Thompson's plans through voluntary redundancies and natural wastage.
Mr Thompson was today keen not to suggest he would backtrack - he struck a cautious note when he said at today's conference: "We came up with the proposals for staff numbers after many months of discussion. I would be surprised if we could find a way of shifting those significantly."
At this point, an NUJ official attending the conference cut in: "Why can't you use the word negotiate?"
"At no point have we set pre-conditions or refused to discuss any aspect of the changes and we were disappointed when the unions decided to walk away from talks and ballot instead for industrial action," Mr Thompson responded.
Challenged about whether the BBC could have handled the proposed job cuts better, he added: "I don't think so really. They are quite radical changes. The scale and nature of the changes rather than the way they were communicated means this is a very difficult period for us."
The unions are seeking a guarantee of there being no compulsory redundancies, which would require the job cuts to be implemented over a longer period than envisaged by Mr Thompson, to achieve his targets via voluntary redundancy and natural wastage.
They are also demanding a 90-day moratorium on Mr Thompson's proposed cuts and oppose his plan to sell off the BBC's Broadcast and Resources subsidiaries and outsource jobs from the corporation's professional services departments.
Bectu said both sides had agreed to talks without pre-conditions, although the get-together on Thursday will not necessarily begin with face to face negotiations - which is in line with normal Acas procedure.
The union added that no further announcements would be made about next week's proposed BBC industrial action while the Acas talks are going on.
· To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857
· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
