Journalists Strike at Trinity Mirror Group

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Journalists Strike at Trinity Mirror Group

Interview with Branch Officer and Deputy Shop Steward

Over the last few weeks there has been a series of one-day and two-day strikes by Newcastle journalists, members of the Nation Union of Journalists (NUJ), at The Journal, Evening Chronicle and Herald and Post. The most recent was on Friday and Saturday last week.

The journalists who have recently gained recognition for their trade union at the Trinity Mirror Group-owned Thompson House came out on strike for a 4% pay rise after they received an offer of 2% which was eroding their already low pay. The strike ended on August 14 after the union agreed to accept a deal offered by management at the conciliation service ACAS last month. No details of the deal have yet been reported but Father of the Chapel Will Mapplebeck was reported as saying: "I'm proud that my members registered their protest and took part in the NUJ national campaign to improve journalists' wages."

WDIE is re-printing an interview with the strikers on August 10, which took place before the dispute ended. Despite the outcome of the conciliation procedure, the journalists had refused to roll over and be taken for granted by the management, and they have strengthened their organisation in defence of their interests.

Q to BO: Could you talk a bit about the history of the NUJ strike struggle?

A: The union was recognised before March last year. We had spent the best part of a year negotiating for recognition for the NUJ and that was immediately after the Employment Relations Act went through. We got a solid vote for recognition. There were a lot of hurdles you had to go through with the Act and we had to get more than 40% of the entire workplace and more than 50% in the ballot. What we got in the end was substantial – I think it was over 90%.

We then negotiated a partnership agreement between the NUJ Chapel here and the management. That partnership agreement, when it came to a disputes procedure we had to do several things the first stage being negotiations between the shop steward and the senior management with the editor and the personnel director at that stage normally. If you don’t achieve the resolution of the problems there then you go on to a meeting between full time officer on one side and the Managing Director on the other side. If you don’t receive resolution there then the next step is for both sides talking to ACAS to resolve the issue through conciliation.

Our claim was for a 4% rise and we went through to the step where the regional organiser was involved and they offered 2%. This was the offer that the Trinity - Mirror Group, which is the largest Newspaper group in Britain, was putting in place all round Britain. You have to understand that at most of the other centres the NUJ is not recognised. At our workplace they refused to offer more than 2% and would not move on that when we said that the next stage was to go to ACAS but management refused to go to agree to take the dispute to ACAS. That left us in the position of either accepting 2% and accepting that they could break the agreement when ever they saw fit or we had to ballot for industrial action. Of course, once we decided to ballot for industrial action one would have thought that they would come back to us and agree to take the matter to ACAS but they didn’t. The ballot achieved 88% in favour of the strike and we gave seven days' notice of strike and named two days. Management then approached us with the question of what needed to be done to resolve this. We said that they should agree to take the matter to ACAS. There were two dates in that week but management said that they could not make those dates. When we finally had that meeting three weeks later management came up with a few pounds for some people but it amounted to nothing at all for most people. The NUJ Chapel then voted to go ahead with the strike and it is now in its third week.

Q to BO: How has the Journal and Chronicle reported the issue?

A: They have reported it briefly and fairly on both sides and haven’t tried to trash us in the papers.

Q to BO: How has the strike gone has Trinity - Mirror Group tried to divide the workforce?

A: We have got stronger. We started off with about 45% union membership here out of about 180 journalists and now through this dispute more people have been joining and now we are about 60%, which still leaves about a third of the journalists who are working on. The management have been encouraging them to work on and the Managing Director of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle and The Journal has a sent a letter to all of them saying why he doesn’t think the strike is productive and that it is not going to help the company of anyone. Nothing nasty as yet but the usual tactics to try and divide us. I think they thought that we had very small support.

Q to BO: What lessons have you learnt so far?

A: What we have learnt, I think, is that Trinity - Mirror Group is a big organisation and that it is not sufficient to get one centre out. It is shaking Thompson House (Newcastle Journal and Chronicle Building -ed.) but it isn’t enough to shake Canary Warf. At the moment they are looking at us as being one rogue centre as it were. I think what we have learn is that to succeed and to take on a company the size of Trinity Mirror we need to get the other centres out – Liverpool, Cardiff, Birmingham, South London Press, Chesterfield and so on.

Q to BO: I was reading that other NUJ Chapels are taking action today.

A: There are some at about the stage we were before.

Liverpool are balloting at the moment on their weeklies for strike action but we are about one year ahead in terms of getting recognition and being organised and what we would like to see is that at the other centres the unions are recognised as well so that they can be in a similar situation to us next year. This is so that when next year pay claim comes around we will be an organisation at the whole of Trinity - Mirror Group and not just here and we will be a lot stronger.

Q to BO: So part of the struggle here is to gain strength for the future?

A: One has to say that Trinity - Mirror Group has been very surprised and they have underestimated us every step of the way. First of all they though that they could not honour our agreement to take the matter to ACAS and that we would just roll over. They then thought that they would go to ACAS and offer very little and nothing would happen and it did we went out on strike. Then we went out on strike again and then we are on a longer strike this time round. It is now being damaging for the papers, which is unfortunate because we don’t want to damage the papers. We cannot stop the papers with the number we have got because of the new technology but I think they have been quite surprised by how widespread our support has been. How widespread the information we are putting out about the paper does embarrass them. Everyone in this part of the world now knows that they are a very rich company making very large profits and paying the staff less than generously. What is very positive is that size of the union increased dramatically and that shocked them. There are a lot of young journalists who have come out and joined the union – people who they may have considered "Thatcher's children" and they are the ones who are coming out and that has been really pleasing to me as a young journalist.

Q to DSS: Do you see any significance in that the journalists are getting organised in this way?

A: I think it is a general backlash against ten years of anti-trade union policies. The Labour government has not done enough but it did introduce that legislation and I think the union movement is getting started again and don’t think journalists are any different from any other profession. I think it is happening across the board you are seeing it at the London Underground and everywhere.

Q to both: A lot of other workers and people are disillusioned with all the big party system, which is in crisis. Do you see journalists as well as organising their trade union taking up politics in a new way as an alternative?

A from DSS: (Laughs!) The dispute is not very politicised in my opinion, it is about pay, personally I am not a radical by any means. Ten years down the line maybe I don’t know…

A from BO: Democracy is changing; people want to have a more hands on democracy and I think such as supporting the Regional Assembly when that happens.