Five days to remember
Eight months of fruitless negotiations led to five days of strike action in May by York NUJ members. “Like any other regional paper at the moment, we are under-staffed,” says Joint FoC Sam Southgate. “Video journalism has been brought in, putting pressure on reporters and increasing workloads. New publications have been brought in as well.
“We’re all doing more work and we’ve had fewer staff in the last year. Against that background we decided to go for an above-inflation pay rise.” But York managers refused to budge from a 3 per cent offer — even though some other Newsquest centres had offered their journalists more.
For the chapel, the carrot of an extra half per cent “merit money” to be distributed by the editor showed that more money might be available. But, says Sam Southgate, “it became clear they were not really intending to spend it”.
The action struck a chord in York and across UK journalism. ”It is sad that journalists have to take this kind of action to secure a wage that doesn’t even keep up with inflation and still remains appallingly low by anyone’s standards,” said Ian Proctor, FoC of the West London and Bucks Chapel in a post to the strikers’ blog.
“I congratulate you for standing up to the bosses, who, like ours — Trinity Mirror — are using the downturn in the economy as an excuse for more pitifully poor pay offers and cannot even ensure parity between employees on different titles. It’s shameful that management plead poverty yet splurge millions on directors’ salaries.”
Support in the city was remarkable. The Green, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative parties all publicly backed the strikers. The Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for York Central, Susan Wade Weeks, visited the picketline twice, telling the strikers that her daughter, Honeysuckle Weeks, a star in the TV show Foyle’s War, would also be rooting for them.
That was not the only showbiz support. Actor Philip Winchester, who will star as Robinson Crusoe in a US television show being filmed in York by NBC, signed the strikers’ petition.
Labour MP John Grogan, whose Selby constituency is covered by the Press, was another picketline visitor. “Newsquest management has a responsibility to negotiate a decent deal which provides adequate rewards,” he said in a statement.
The strikers’ blog attracted support from around the world with messages ranging from ones from holidaying colleagues to NUJ activist Alex Lloyd’s. She now lives and works in New York. “Bosses at The Press love to stress what a campaigning local paper it is,” she said. “How can they expect journalists to expose the wrong-doings of other companies if they can’t look after their own?”
All five days of the strike, which took in a bank holiday Monday, were “brilliant,” says Sam Southgate. “Everyone who was able to took part in picketing. It was really fun and lively. People really got into the spirit of it. There were no long faces on the picketline.”
Twenty strikers sang as they marched back to work en masse. They had a 900-signature petition for managing director Steve Hughes and plans for more action in the days to come.
“We returned to work today not in doom nor gloom, but in a positive, vibrant mood,” said joint FoC Tony Kelly. “Can any of us have been prouder to be members of the NUJ than during our brave and concerted action throughout the York chapel’s five-day strike? No.
“We now have a chapel of strength. We now have a chapel of character. We now have a chapel of purpose. Those five days have given us that. They have earned respect across the city of York, across the union nationally, across the industry country-wide.
“The taboo of taking industrial action has been shattered. There is no need to fear it. Provided we stick together we can embrace the notion of fighting legitimately for our rights and steadfastly pressing our claims for fair pay and better working conditions.”
Sub editor and folk singer Richard Foster had never been on strike in nearly 30 years as a journalist, he wrote on the strikers’ blog.
“So the decision by members of the NUJ at The Press in York to strike really churned me up. I could not settle until I had written some lyrics about the strike. I had voted against industrial action and writing this song helped me to come to terms with what it meant to go on strike.
“Throughout England’s history, ballads and songs have been written so the stories of particular struggles could be passed on to future generations. Now there’s a song about this year’s NUJ strike in York.”
This is one verse and the chorus:
Buy your food from family firms. Say goodnight on friendly terms.
Filling The Press with PR guff simply is not good enough.
Sing it out loud and clear: “Come on readers, join us here”
Remember those who have no voice. We’ve a strike to win, we’ve made our choice.
Chorus:
You can be right – standing in the wrong place.
You can be wrong – footed in the rat race.
You can be tight, drinking ’til your head’s clear.
Here’s another list of things I learnt this year.
Things I Learnt This Year (Strike Version)Steve Knightley with additional lyrics by Richard Foster
See Richard Foster perform this song and more strike videos on YouTube at http://tinyurl.com/5zeevz
Ancient …
By Tony Harcup
The York dispute has echoes of the first strike in NUJ history, when reporters on the Yorkshire Herald — forerunner of The Press — struck in 1911. It followed the sacking of chief reporter Clifford Nixon, who had spent two years asking politely for improvements to working conditions that were compared to Charles Dickens’ novel Nicholas Nickleby.
Staff complained that the Herald was “the hardest driven amongst all the daily papers of the country”, with reporters normally working seven days a week and an average of 12 hours a day. They walked out after Clifford Nixon was sacked for speaking out, and the NUJ called on members to boycott jobs on the paper.
The ban lasted until 1922, by which time conditions had gradually caught up with rival titles. General Secretary Henry Richardson observed: “It was a paradox of a dispute. It was both ineffective and effective. It did not improve conditions in the Yorkshire Herald office at the time, but it improved them in many another bad office.”
Clifford Nixon later recalled: “Sheer desperation produced the strike at York. There was no planning, just spontaneous combustion arising from mental agony and physical fatigue. The union behaved nobly to those who stood by its mandate. We were all found jobs and assisted financially.
“I only hope that, in the years that followed, our attempt to show that slave tactics must not pay a dividend in journalism, fired others and so resulted in happier days, which, in my judgement, only the NUJ has found for our profession.”
The story of the strike is told in Journalists: 100 Years of the NUJ by Tim Gopsill and Greg Neale, Profile Books, £17.99; available through the union at £10 plus £2 p&p, go to www.nuj.org.uk and follow the links.
… AND MODERN
THE full and continuing story of the strike is on the chapel blog:
You can sign the chapel’s online petition at
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6rtf7g