ITV’s chief executive has taken a tough stance against staff striking over pay and called on the BBC’s TV activities to be curbed.
Adam Crozier said that the 24-hour strike, timed to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday, was being carried out by a tiny minority of staff and that most of the workforce are happy with their pay.
“The vast majority of people are happy with the pay rise and are getting on with the job,” he said. “Out of 4,000 full-time ITV staff in the UK, 462 are union members of whom 226 voted to go on strike. Slightly less than half the members and a small proportion of the workforce.”
Crozier said that while staff are “perfectly within their rights” to take strike action, the company is almost certainly not going to improve its offer of a 2% rise, an amount ITV’s unions have called “miserly”.
“I fully respect pay is a very emotive issue [and therefore] to some extent you can never pay enough,” he said. “We feel we have taken a very fair approach to pay over 5 years [I] have been here and during the transformation plan, including this year.”
Crozier claimed that over the past five years basic pay has increased by 13.5% – compared with 6.4% in the private sector and 4.6% in the public sector since 2012 – and that the company has paid a bonus each year to all staff.
“People have been a huge part of the turnaround at ITV,” he said. “We absolutely appreciate everything everyone has done and will continue to take what we think is the right, fair and balanced approach to pay.”
Strike action caused some disruption to ITV, with Loose Women being pre-recorded, and delays to shooting on Coronation Street and Emmerdale. The strike also affected the BBC, which was forced to pospone filming of Have I Got News for You as it is shot at ITV’s London studios.
Crozier also used the meeting, which was picketed by about 20 ITV staff, to call for the BBC Trust to be scrapped and for the corporation to be forced to stop making copycat programming that affects commercial rivals.
“We are very clear we think given the way the BBC is funded they should really be pushed more and more to do more distinct programming that can sit alongside what commercial sector does and be more of an enabler to the commercial sector,” he said. “And I don’t just mean television I also mean things like local newspapers and local radio. We’d like to see them do more of that and from time to time they drift away from that. We wait to see what steps the new secretary [of state for culture, media and sport] will take.”
Crozier said that it made “perfect common sense” for the BBC Trust to be scrapped and for Ofcom to take over regulating the corporation.
“I think there is a general view in the industry that the trust is not fit for purpose,” he said. “The very clear ITV position is that really the BBC should come under Ofcom just as the rest of the broadcast market does and that makes perfect common sense.”
Crozier also applauded the appointment of John Whittingdale as culture secretary and said that he disagreed with reports that he would be anti-BBC.
“He is a very good appointment,” he said. “He has chaired over the last number of years the [culture] select committee so brings a deep understanding of the industry. I don’t think, despite the way some of the reports in some of the papers have come across, [that he] starts with a particular agenda. He has always struck me as a fair person. He will look at the facts before deciding what to do about anything, including the BBC.”
