RTÉ is to seek as many as 300 redundancies – more than had initially been expected – when it announces a cost-cutting programme to staff on Thursday.
The public-service broadcaster has Government funding to press ahead with a voluntary-redundancy scheme that will seek to reduce its workforce of about 2,000 by between 250 and 300 people.
Sources said RTÉ and its director general, Dee Forbes, have been given the go-ahead by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Communications for the scheme, which will offer more generous severance packages to those who have worked there longer.
Staff with at least 10 years at the organisation will be offered four weeks’ pay per year of service, as well as the statutory entitlement of two weeks pay per year. The total of six weeks per year, capped at two years’ salary, is more than that on offer to staff with less than 10 years’ service. That group will be offered two weeks’ pay per year in addition to statutory redundancy pay, equalling four weeks’ pay per year, again capped at two years’ salary.
Those terms are more generous than those offered at another commercial State company, Bus Éireann, which is also putting in place a voluntary-redundancy scheme, with the aim of shedding about 200 jobs.
The State-owned bus company said on Wednesday that under its severance scheme workers under 55 and ineligible for pension would be offered two and half weeks’ pay per year of service in addition to statutory entitlements.
The RTÉ terms are also better than the three weeks’ pay per year of service, as well as two weeks’ statutory redundancy payments, offered initially to staff in the HSE and later across the public service following the economic crash.
