With the owners driving down costs, journalists are fighting for jobs, pay and quality…
The fight for journalism
WORKERS, MARCH 2009 ISSUE
Newspaper offices across Britain are in uproar as proprietors attempt to force through job cuts and pay freezes. Unlike some industries, publishing is not broke, and most of the employers trying to save on labour costs are making profits that other capitalists would give their right arms for.
But newspaper publishing is an industry used to making vast profits – returns of more than 20 per cent on turnover are not unusual – and the employers clearly want to ensure that dividends will stay healthy.
It’s partly the knowledge that the cuts don’t have to be made that is spurring members of the National Union of Journalists in local, regional and national newspapers to action in an unprecedented wave of resistance.
As Workers went to press, journalists at the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post, owned by Johnston Press, were taking strike action, there were active ballots for industrial action at business publisher Reed Business Information, and votes for ballots at the Financial Times and the Independent.
The striking Yorkshire Post journalists have set up a blog, and supporters have formed a Facebook group, Save Leeds’ Local Newspapers, that has already notched up 1,000 members. High-profile local support has come from Yorkshire playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The company is trying to force through redundancies in the photographic section and elsewhere, and to impose a pay freeze.
“The picketing will continue over the weekend to demonstrate the chapel’s determination to stop compulsory redundancies and protect the papers from being run into the ground,” said NUJ Northern Regional Organiser Chris Morley.
Turning laws on their heads
In local newspapers, journalists at Newsquest York took action earlier in February, The chapel (office branch) there is facing job cuts, and has sought to turn the anti-union laws on their head by giving notice of industrial action on every weekday between now and 30 March. Jenny Lennox, NUJ Assistant Organiser, said: “By giving notice of discontinuous industrial action, starting afresh every day at noon, the chapel has the option of meeting whenever they feel the need to.”
And the chapel at Yattenden-owned Staffordshire Newspapers has forced management to withdraw plans for compulsory redundancies. The NUJ chapel at Johnston Press-owned Derry Journal was also due to ballot over redundancies.
A running theme throughout all the disputes is the threat to journalistic standards and service to communities posed by proprietors’ greed. “We have no faith whatsoever in Newsquest’s commitment to quality journalism, nor its ability to deliver it,” said the Newsquest York chapel. In publishing, as elsewhere, profitable companies are deepening the recession by seeking to drive down costs and drive up profits.
“Never waste a crisis,” Rupert Murdoch’s son James, who is running News Corporation, told newspaper executives recently. For them, as for countless other capitalists, the recession is an opportunity – to boost profits and dividends and depress costs.
Operating profits at Johnson Press are 29 per cent and at Trinity Mirror 19 per cent, according to an NUJ briefing paper. Trinity Mirror axed 1,200 jobs last year and closed 44 titles.
Newsquest’s US parent company, Gannet, said in January that it would hold its dividend at 40 cents a share: “This is the same level it has paid since October 2007, which was a 29 per cent hike on what was already its highest ever dividend rate,” points out the NUJ.
If action goes ahead at Reed Business Publishing, which employs hundreds of journalists, it will be the first for almost 20 years. The chapel was derecognised in 1992, but has gained membership and regained recognition and bargaining rights. The company is seeking compulsory redundancies, but is also trying to force through the merger of production desks on different specialist titles – so that instead of each magazine having a team of subeditors and designers who understand it, work will be pooled, with a consequent loss not only of jobs but of quality.
At the Financial Times, a meeting of more than 130 members earlier in February called for a ballot on industrial action over plans for three compulsory redundancies on top of cuts already made. Barry Fitzpatrick, NUJ Head of Publishing, said: “Quite simply, management has to recognise that the need for compulsory cutbacks has now been eliminated. There is no justification for forcing people out of the door.”
Management at the Guardian has announced it intends to freeze wages, sparking the NUJ to declare that it must negotiate. At the Independent, staff are balloting for action over threats of compulsory redundancies.
The response to the employers’ offensive has exceeded expectations. A Jobs Summit on 24 January due to be held at the NUJ’s head office in London had to be moved to a larger location to accommodate the 150 members who turned up on a Saturday to discuss how to proceed.
At the summit, NUJ President James Doherty said, “At the heart of this battle is a fight, not only for jobs, but for quality journalism and the integral part it plays in the health of our democracy and in our communities.”
Almost two decades of excessive profiteering, sales and mergers driven by the voracious demands of shareholders has led to thousands of journalists losing their jobs and to the closure of hundreds of titles, said Doherty. “However, today we are here to send a message that our industry is not dead.”
Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News, said, “The big lie you find all over the world from media corporations is that they can cut staffing and resources without damaging the quality news they produce. They say the internet is the problem and the credit crunch has made it worse, but they have already ransacked the newsrooms for profit.”
Media companies, said NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear, “still make profits and have the cash to give executives big pay-offs and pensions. If NUJ members stick together, fight hard, and create a national debate on the importance of journalism in a democracy we can change things.”
It’s no surprise that the summit included discussion of forms of media ownership. “The appetite for local, regional, national and international news has not died, if anything it has increased – but the business model which values an inflated bottom line, rather than quality journalism, is dead,” said Nick Davies. But a hackneyed call for “nationalisation under workers’ control” was dismissed. Clearly, journalists intend to think more deeply about how their industry can survive and produce quality journalism rather than reproduce press releases.
There are – or should be – no illusions about the battle ahead. “Make no mistake,” said Doherty, “we are in a war – and we are not sure how long it will last – or the number of casualties we’ll suffer along the way.” But the determination to fight and to win is growing.