Leeds the way to fight job cuts
STRIKE action hit Yorkshire Post Newspapers in Leeds, flagship of the Johnston Press group, with a walkout by 140 NUJ members in protest at compulsory redundancies. Eight days of strikes began on February 19 over the threat of 15 editorial job losses.
The Yorkshire Post and Evening Post Joint Chapel warned six months ago that if a single compulsory redundancy was declared they would ballot on strike action.
Redundancies were declared and in the ballot a massive 97.3 per cent of those who voted said “yes” to strike action: 109 were in favour and three against.
The journalists held a mass meeting, attended by over 100 members, who voted unanimously for two four-day periods of strike action. They are protesting too at Johnston Press’s refusal to offer severance payments in line with other centres and at the steady reduction of standards on the two daily papers through years of budget cuts and non-replacement of staff.
First on the picket line at 6.45 am was Tony Harney, deputy news editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post, who is believed to be the papers’ longest-serving employee with 45 years service. Every YEP editorial executive below the editor is a union member — assistant editor Alan Cameron, the news, features and sports editor, chief sub and photographic manager — and all were on the picket line.
The noisy and enthusiastic picket line was visited by camera crews from Yorkshire Television’s news magazine programme Calendar and by BBC TV Look North.
The YPN building is on one of the busiest commuter routes into and out of Leeds. Pickets wielded placards saying “Toot your support” and there was a cacophony of noise from lorries, vans, cars, ambulances, taxis, fire engines, and even thumbs up from passing police patrols.
Thousands of leaflets explaining the dispute were handed to the public and to non-editorial staff who went in. One administrative worker who talked to pickets said she had been so inspired by the action that she was joining UNITE, the union for other staff.
One of the chapel’s youngest members had arranged for a band to play — Leeds band Shakinouts, who had written a YPN Strike Song.
The pickets’ numbers increased to more than 100 when a rally was staged with NUJ deputy general secretary Michelle Stanistreet and representatives of other unions, councillors, community groups and others. Peter Lazenby, who with Peter Johnson is Joint FoC of the Joint Chapel, read messages of support that had flooded in from NUJ Chapels and branches, and other unions.
Michelle Stanistreet congratulated the chapel, pointing out that the margin in the ballot to strike was one of the largest in the union’s history.
There was support from the public: boxes of chocolates from a local PR firm, free flasks of coffee from a nearby café and three barrels of beer from a local bar and brewery.
Pete Lazenby said: “This has been a fantastic start to our action. The response from the public has been more than we could have hoped for. There is a groundswell of opposition to the employers’ greed for profits, incompetence and attempted destruction of journalists’ livelihoods.
“It is the senior management of Johnston Press which is responsible for a situation where the company’s debts are now almost ten times greater than the company’s share value, not us.”
AMONG SUPPORTERS of the strike was Scarborough-based playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, who sent an email saying he was “appalled that the quality of such a valued, independent, individual press voice will be in any way diminished.
“I regard the YP most highly. It is our own. It IS the voice of Yorkshire.”