LE NOOOGE BOUGE!*
NUJ PARIS Branch members took part in the national demonstration that accompanied a general strike in France on January 29. They joined 300,000 French trade unionists in Paris on a day that saw more than two million people protest at job cuts, pay freezes, and cutbacks in social security.
The message was that workers were not going to pay for the mistakes of the bankers and wanted better pay and conditions.
There have been redundancies in French public and privately owned media. At least 900 jobs are threatened at the state-run France Télévisions group, which the government is in the process of dismantling, with its revenues reduced and top management appointed directly by President Nicolas Sarkozy. Employers’ associations have announced pay freezes in the daily press and news magazines.
Paris Branch chair Jim Pollard said: “We think it is important that as Anglophone journalists we back up our French colleagues in their fight against cuts. We have the same problems of globalisation and economic crisis as our colleagues in Britain and Ireland.”
*The NUJ on the move. Headline from Paris branch members