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The General Secretary's article was about the spate of workplace occupations and wildcat strikes that have recently taken place in workplaces across the UK in 2009.
In the context of Claire Enders' prediction that half of all local newspaper titles in the UK face closure before 2013, the likelihood of some journalists somewhere occupying their newspaper offices after their bosses shut the paper down after years of mismanagement isn't that unlikely. Particularly in areas where there are simply no other journalistic jobs to go to.
They may well work for free - at least for a short period - in the hope an alternative business model can be worked out or another owner found - possibly one not demanding 40% returns on turnover. This is because a lot of journalists see their role as serving their communities and playing a role in society, rather than simply doing the job for the money. Clearly this is something you fail to appreciate or understand.
The NUJ is busily researching alternative ownership models, recruiting and building influence into new media workplaces, and making the case for quality journalism wherever we can to anyone that will listen. For example, I have just come back into the office from leafleting delegates to the Conservative Party conference to campaign against top-slicing the licence fee. Is that the activity of a bunch of "fucking loon Trots"?
We win millions in compensation every year for journalists who have been unfairly dismissed or made ill by bullies like you.
We are assisting a whole group of young people, many of whom have joined the union in the past few weeks, at the Press Association in Howden due to dozens of planned job cuts. I've represented and won cases for dozens of young people who "cough-up" their membership fees because they see the need for maximum unity of all journalists - of all political shades - to fight for our industry.
Perhaps you could come out from behind your convenient cloak of anonymity and debate seriously with NUJ representatives about why you think journalists are better off without a union. I would dearly love to see you try.
Lawrence Shaw
NUJ Assistant Organiser (North and Midlands of England)
Your craven cowardice in keeping your head down through this whole process (yeah I'm sure everyone believes you kept your mouth shut because "he just wouldn't get it") is as complicit as that of the editor, chief executive or chairman in bowing to know-nothing accountants in the search for the staff-free office.
While this is your prerogative as an individual, it's singularly unimpressive that you'd then try and influence others to follow you in leaving their spine at the door.
This is stuff that many people who work in the industry clearly identify with. Yet your response to all this is to sit back and whinge about it rather than do anything so vulgar as try to actively organise against it and try to make things better, which is what the union attempts to do - and succeeds more often than is given credit.
I know this column's a bit of a non-serious wind-up, but wind-ups and satire need to be accurate to be good or funny. This ignorant anti-union rant, while doubtless welcomed by the bosses against whom you claim to rail, is neither - just another unthinking piece of self-justification for inaction.
Armchair critics - doncha just love 'em. So do the bean-counters.
You want ideas about how to save jobs. Where have you been for the last year or more? You certainly can't have had any contact with a union rep, or you'd know the NUJ is taking the argument straight to the proprietors: sometimes through determined face-to-face negotiation, sometimes through industrial action, sometimes through lobbying politicians, sometimes through building up the expertise and confidence of our workplace reps through events such as the forthcoming day-school for activists in the magazine and book sector (there are full details here http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1354 ). If we ever need to add occupations to that list, so be it.
You can sit there and call our General Secretary a fucking loon. Who the fcuk are you? The fact is that the occupations have made a difference to how bosses and government ministers think about all workers fighting to save their jobs. And the fact that the NUJ has won recognition as a union which stands up and fights for its members means that we ARE making a difference and young journalists who are new to the profession are joining us every week. They know we are stronger together. That makes a difference. Sitting at your lonely computer screen complaining about the boss' perfume... who cares?
Peter Murray
NUJ Vice President
For any real people out there who might be fooled into thinking that this unwarranted, anti-union potshot even vaguely reflects the extent of the NUJ's response to this carnage, have a look at this from June http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1250
I'm surprised to discover that so few of my NUJ comrades have heard of it…
:-)
Tsk.
can't take a joke, too! Hurrah!
Anyway we could do this all night in some sort of horrifying feedback loop, but I'm off work now so er, have fun.
I refused to rejoin then after a spell out of the industry because the union really was then more interested in its own infighting than in its members' interests, and in those days I was able to take care of myself, so luckily it didn't matter.
However, everything has changed and I would urge everyone still in the biz (I'm now retired) to join the NUJ for their own sakes. It will protect their interests and so help me they need protecting. And note: some of those sit-ins have had a positive effect. Does reflecting that the workers need protection against the profit margin munchers make me a Trot too, Gatsby? If so, I'm proud.
PS: Grey isn't all wrong. Pity he didn't tell that idiot manager what he was telling us.
There is a terribly sad news feature in the current issue of Press Gazette in which we go back to Long Eaton a year after its paid-for local weekly was closed. After more than a century of publication it was shut down with barely a whimper, announced to the readers with a front page nib
Let's not go quietly into the night.
Can't we have some proper anarchy?
The sooner we reach the South Sea Bubble-style tipping point leading to the break up of some of these monstrous media groups, the better.
For four years until 2008 I sat in a seat like Grey's, trying to manage ever-decreasing editorial budgets while driving a diminishing over-worked - but still very motivated - staff to maintain high standards on a host of regional newspapers and websites.
Meanwhile, our big group posted ever-increasing profits, although you'd never know it from the state of our shabby offices, empty desks and ancient, constantly failing equipment. The editorial staff were magnificent when it came to papering over the cracks. After all, many lived on survival level salaries and were dab hands at making do.
One day, having filled in the latest 'bench-marking' suicide note, I heard my own Eminence Grease say it was 'time to slay the sacred cow of editorial costs'.
Since the cow had already been bludgeoned down into a dried and shrivelled economy burger, I was mesmerised. So sharpened was my focus that I 'withdrew my labour' at the first opportunity, preferring redundancy and unemployment to propping up the madness.
Seriously, the quicker we get to the stage of independently-owned successful start-up or relaunched websites and papers, the more vital public service journalism we might be able to save. Whether it's the NUJ sleeping under broken desks or an almighty crack appearing in the boardroom table, I don't mind if it brings us even a few hours closer to the end of this farce.
Then start flogging on-line ad space....
and listen to the howls as the management's sphincters tighten...
This shows just how important the magazine is for leading the debate about how we fight the cuts and plan for the future, looking at alternative ownership models like co-ops and new start ups, and discussing our response.
We need a vibrant Journalist, on paper and on the web, for this. This is the proper role of a union journal, not as just another lifestyle magazine, but as a vital part of the union's armoury - informing, inspiring and mobilising NUJ members. And winning new members along the way.
That's why I am standing in the election to find the next editor. You can find out more, if you are so inclined, at http://richsimcox.co.uk
http://fleetstreetblues.blogspot.com/2009/10/in...
Hence my reply, blithely dismissing donnachadelong's comment "oh anarchism doesn't work" comes across as pretty argumentative if you're aware of the its massively influential history, the massive range of theories within it etc etc. It'd be like saying "oh the free market doesn't work," which I would argue, but I'd expect a challenge or two no?
Thing is, it appears you appear to have no problem with lefties being called "fucking loons" but if the writer of this nasty little piece is as a result called a coward (which was the worst thing I said), wrong or ignorant you immediately leap on it as evidence of abominable behaviour?
It was in the upstairs room above a seedy pub in the late-80s and was attended almost entirely by angry, bearded young men from the local BBC radio newsroom.
They were very keen on dreaming up new ways to bring the Corporation crashing down, and also with showing solidarity with Sinn Fein, whose voice had been banned from the airwaves,
We voted to send a letter to the landlord demanding he changed the name of the pub we were in from the George & Dragon to "The Neslon Mandela" to raise awareness in the town.*
I realised quite quickly I wasn't going to fit in and never went back.
*May not be completely true but based on a true story.
I know, I used to go to them...
And now the union threatens strike action, works to rule then goes back to normal for the same as what was originally offered by the management.
Of course, there are pay freezes now, so not even an annual pay round to respond to.
Whenever a well-established, financially-viable newspaper is closed down by the panicking corporate suits – and Long Eaton springs to mind - you need to get in there with a sensible business plan based on sensible costs and a sensible margin. Rally the local businesses; seek out local investors with a few bob to spend (every town has them, even in these difficult times); lean on the local council and the regional quangos; put together a local management team backed up by national expertise (you do still know how to do journalism, don’t you?).
The NUJ should create a template for a sensible and viable newspaper business that could be applied wherever the need or opportunity arises. We should be snatching these ‘doomed’ titles back from the greedy bastards who don’t understand or care about our craft and its importance to the community. Fuck them – if they don’t want them, we’ll have them.
Of course, if that’s too challenging, you could always just write another condolence note to Colonel Gaddafi…
http://jonslattery.blogspot.com/2009/03/greensl...
http://jonslattery.blogspot.com/2009/04/exclusi...
, we just haven't yet come up with easy answers (like most of the bosses).
I know that behind the Grey Cardigan persona there is a former newspaper journalist. So, GC, why don't you answer the question once and for all: Gaddaffi Telegram: Fact or Fiction? (You do still know how to do journalism, don't you?)
The question I asked you is: was the telegram sent?
Are you going to use your journalisatic skills to find out?
But they'd rather close them anyway.
Firstly out of spite, and also as a way to "minimise the threat to the core revenue stream."
The election for editor of the National Union of Journalists' magazine turned bitter today with one of the candidates accused of being part of a hard-left plot to take over the union.
Freelance journalist Mark Watts circulated an email to 19,000 NUJ members naming rival candidate Richard Simcox as a member of a faction calling itself "NUJ Left."
Mr Watts claimed the faction was using the election for editor of Journalist magazine as part of a bid to take control of the union's ruling national executive.