1979 onwards
The period since 1979 has been a critical one for BECTU and its predecessor unions.
Hostile government legislation, technological and structural changes in the industries in which they organised, sustained attacks by employers on the employment, contractual status, pay and conditions of service of union members have left BECTU with a paid-up membership (over 26,500 at December 2006) significantly smaller than the 60,000 or so members collectively claimed by ABS, ACTT and NATTKE in the early 1980s.
The union, however, has maintained a presence in the main areas of membership inherited from BETA and ACTT.
It has agreements with the BBC and negotiating and representation rights for all categories of its staff. It has agreements with individual ITV companies and independent radio companies and with the regulatory and transmission bodies.
Its Arts and Entertainment Division has national and local agreements in the theatre, cinema and leisure industries, including 'house agreements' with the major subsidised opera, ballet and drama companies.
There are agreements for freelance film production members with PACT (Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) and for background artists in the Greater London area, and recommended going rates for workers on commercials.
Half of BECTU's members are now freelance workers, and the proportion continues to grow. The union is at the forefront of the UK trade union movement in organising and representing 'atypical' workers.
BECTU is affiliated to the TUC and the Labour Party and is a key member of the Federation of Entertainment Unions.
Internationally the union played a decisive role in December 1993 in the merger of the International Secretariat of Entertainment Trade Unions (ISETU), of which ABS and NATKE had been founder members in 1965, and the International Federation of Audio Visual Workers' Unions (FISTAV) of which ACTT had been a founder member in 1974.
The rather unwieldy ISETU/FISTAV was changed to Media and Entertainment International (MEI) in 1996. BECTU's current president, Tony Lennon, is president also of MEI.
MEI is now the entertainment industry section of UNI (Union Network International), the largest international grouping of individual trade unions for skills and services. Formed in 2000, its international headquarters are in Nyon, Switzerland.
The present General Secretary of BECTU is Gerry Morrissey. He was elected in February 2007 following the untimely death in November 2006 of Roger Bolton.
Roger, a former official of the ABS and BETA, had succeeded Tony Hearn in November 1993, and to him is owed the credit for the consolidation of the union's finances and organisation in spite of the industrial turmoil of the 1990s.
As General Secretary of ABS (1972-1984), joint General Secretary and then General Secretary of BETA (1984-1991) and General Secretary of BECTU (1991-1993), Tony Hearn had played a key role with John Wilson (General Secretary of NATTKE 1976-1984 and joint General Secretary of BETA 1984-1987) and Alan Sapper (General Secretary of ACTT 1969-1991) in the amalgamations that finally produced BECTU.