NUJ Conference: Defending pay and conditions

JOURNALISTS NEED well-resourced newsrooms, photographers and media
crews, that enable them to work safely, with good pay and conditions.

Molly Cooper, National Union of Journalists (NUJ),
national executive committee (NEC), personal capacity

However, as the NUJ holds its Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) this
week, these fundamentals are under attack from media companies desperate
to defend their profit margins and their political interests.

The International Federation of Journalists report that 150
journalists were killed in 2005. 35 of these were killed in Iraq,
bringing the death toll since the war began to over 100. Many
journalists who have died are Iraqi, further undermining the independent
scrutiny of the actions of the coalition forces.

Media bosses across the industry are carrying out a sustained
campaign of job cuts in national and regional papers.

Media bosses blame falls in advertising revenue and disappointing
profit forecasts, yet companies like the Guardian Media Group last year
made record profits of £32.6 million.

Socialist Party members have drafted an emergency motion which should
be put to ADM by the NEC, which condemns the job cuts and calls for a
national meeting of M/FOCs (shop stewards and reps) to discuss a
campaign to fight the cuts. It calls for protests outside the offices of
media companies making the cuts – Northcliffe, Trinity Mirror and the
Guardian Media Group – and calls for a campaign of co-ordinated
industrial action, if necessary.

Media bosses are attempting to run newspapers by cutting staff jobs
and relying heavily on freelances, with outsourcing to agencies like the
Press Association. Alongside this supposedly efficient model of media
production goes a culture of bullying, long hours as well as frequent
breaches of health and safety and trade union rights.

It is essential that freelances and staff journalists are integrated
into chapels, with freelance reps on chapel committees, with united
support from freelances and staff for industrial action. Support for
motion 24 is important, as it calls for support from chapels for
freelances considering taking industrial action.

Low pay is endemic across the industry, with many journalists
receiving pay offers of 2-3%. Many freelance have not seen increases in
rates for at least ten years. A motion, written by Socialist Party
members, is calling for the NUJ to adopt a demand of a minimum wage of
£26,000.

We may be able to get small concessions in one set of negotiations
but the bosses will come back time and time again to attack working
people.

Our need for housing, health services and decent pay is secondary to
the need for the rich to preserve their profits.

This is why Socialist Party members are campaigning for a new mass
workers’ party, to stand up to the big business parties in Britain and
fight for system which looks after the interests of ordinary people.