Journalists on local papers based in Brighton and Southampton have been on strike this week over a pay freeze and job cuts.
As reported on The Workers United the action is part of a co-ordinated attack to improve pay and conditions at the American-owned Newsquest group.
Today, according to National Union of Journalists assistant organiser Lawrence Shaw on Twitter: "Newsquest NUJ chapels vote for strike action over pay and cuts - Bolton (74%), Blackburn (100%) and Bradford (90%) on solid turnouts."
Members in Darlington voted for action last week.
Ballots are also underway in York, Andover, and Oxford.
For pictures and reports see:
The Brighton strikers' blog
and
The Southampton strikers' blog
Showing posts with label Southampton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Southampton. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Oxford, Bolton, Bradford, Brighton - everyone talk about strike action
Journalists at the US-owned Newsquest group are stepping up their industrial action over a three-year pay freeze and never ending job cuts.
Members of the National Union Journalists at the company's Brighton and Southampton centres are to take co-ordinated strike action next week.
Workers in Darlington voted 78 percent for strike action in a ballot this week.
Ballots are underway in Blackburn, Bolton, Bradford, and York.
And this week journalists in Andover and Oxford agreed to be balloted for industrial action.
Newsquest - part of the giant American Gannett corporation - is Britain's second biggest newspaper publisher.
Staff have had a three year pay freeze - even though top bosses have paid themselves wacking rises and boasted about profits.
Next week's south coast strikes are on Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 December.
The Brighton and Southampton chapels have already held stoppages.
A chapel officer from the Daily Echo in Southampton said:"The messages of support and encouragement we had last time really helped to motivate people - and helped warm our hearts if not our cold hands and feet!"
The Daily Echo strikers have a blog, a Twitter page, a Facebook group, and pictures on flickr.
COMMENT:
Well done to Newsquest journalists for launching a co-ordinated attack on a ruthless employer.
If this low paid private sector workers can do what's happened to the co-ordianted action promised by the movement's big battalions at the TUC.
Members of the National Union Journalists at the company's Brighton and Southampton centres are to take co-ordinated strike action next week.
Workers in Darlington voted 78 percent for strike action in a ballot this week.
Ballots are underway in Blackburn, Bolton, Bradford, and York.
And this week journalists in Andover and Oxford agreed to be balloted for industrial action.
Newsquest - part of the giant American Gannett corporation - is Britain's second biggest newspaper publisher.
Staff have had a three year pay freeze - even though top bosses have paid themselves wacking rises and boasted about profits.
Next week's south coast strikes are on Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 December.
The Brighton and Southampton chapels have already held stoppages.
A chapel officer from the Daily Echo in Southampton said:"The messages of support and encouragement we had last time really helped to motivate people - and helped warm our hearts if not our cold hands and feet!"
The Daily Echo strikers have a blog, a Twitter page, a Facebook group, and pictures on flickr.
COMMENT:
Well done to Newsquest journalists for launching a co-ordinated attack on a ruthless employer.
If this low paid private sector workers can do what's happened to the co-ordianted action promised by the movement's big battalions at the TUC.
Friday, 19 November 2010
GUEST POST: Bradford journalists join colleagues fighting the big publishing company Newsquest
Newsquest’s bosses in West Yorkshire are worried about falling sales of their papers.
Solution: sack most of your newsroom staff and get them to apply for their own jobs – but there will be fewer of them.
If it wasn’t so serious, you could die laughing. Here’s a company that has lost the plot.
Its journalists, including 29 National Union of Journalists (NUJ) members, have endured a pay freeze lasting more than 1,000 days and the closure of their pension scheme. Now they’re being thrown on the scrap heap.
Paul Davidson, chief executive of this profitable British arm of an American-owned company, sits in his Surrey ivory tower with his enhanced pension and £106,000 pay rise while his managers steer a course for oblivion.
Two editors, six reporting staff and six photographers, including the NUJ’s father of chapel, are at risk of losing their jobs, along with some editorial middle managers’ posts. When the dust settles, there will be two fewer jobs.
Keighley, a post-industrial ex-mill town with high unemployment and social problems, will have its editorial operation merged with Ilkley, a genteel, affluent former spa town.
To pretend this is going to help sales is to live in cloud cuckoo land.
Enough is enough. The Newsquest Bradford chapel today announced it was balloting for industrial action, joining our Newsquest colleagues throughout England.
There have been strikes at Southampton and Brighton. Chapels - workplace branches - in York, Darlington, Bolton, and Blackburn are also balloting.
We’re fighting not just for our journalist members but for our towns and communities, which will be left with pale imitations of newspapers.
By Bob Smith, Father of Chapel, Newsquest Bradford and Newsquest group chapel, NUJ
Strike in Brighton
Ballot in Brighton
Ballot in Blackburn
Ballot in Darlington
Strike in Southampton
LATEST: Newsquest cut jobs in Scotland today
EXTRA: NUJ vice president Donnacha Delong reports from the Brighton picket line
Solution: sack most of your newsroom staff and get them to apply for their own jobs – but there will be fewer of them.
If it wasn’t so serious, you could die laughing. Here’s a company that has lost the plot.
Its journalists, including 29 National Union of Journalists (NUJ) members, have endured a pay freeze lasting more than 1,000 days and the closure of their pension scheme. Now they’re being thrown on the scrap heap.
Paul Davidson, chief executive of this profitable British arm of an American-owned company, sits in his Surrey ivory tower with his enhanced pension and £106,000 pay rise while his managers steer a course for oblivion.
Two editors, six reporting staff and six photographers, including the NUJ’s father of chapel, are at risk of losing their jobs, along with some editorial middle managers’ posts. When the dust settles, there will be two fewer jobs.
Keighley, a post-industrial ex-mill town with high unemployment and social problems, will have its editorial operation merged with Ilkley, a genteel, affluent former spa town.
To pretend this is going to help sales is to live in cloud cuckoo land.
Enough is enough. The Newsquest Bradford chapel today announced it was balloting for industrial action, joining our Newsquest colleagues throughout England.
There have been strikes at Southampton and Brighton. Chapels - workplace branches - in York, Darlington, Bolton, and Blackburn are also balloting.
We’re fighting not just for our journalist members but for our towns and communities, which will be left with pale imitations of newspapers.
By Bob Smith, Father of Chapel, Newsquest Bradford and Newsquest group chapel, NUJ
Strike in Brighton
Ballot in Brighton
Ballot in Blackburn
Ballot in Darlington
Strike in Southampton
LATEST: Newsquest cut jobs in Scotland today
EXTRA: NUJ vice president Donnacha Delong reports from the Brighton picket line
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Massive vote for strike action in Sussex
Journalists in Brighton are set to join their Southampton colleagues on strike over pay.
Members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) at the Newsquest company in Sussex have voted 91 percent for strike action, and 95 percent for action short of a strike in a secret ballot with a 82 percent turnout.
The papers involved include the daily Brighton Argus.
Journalists at Newsquest Hampshire have been on strike for two days as reported on The Workers United.
Tom Davies, an NUJ national executive member for London, visted the Southampton strikers and said: "Newsquest workers have had to endure pay freezes or below-inflation pay settlements for far too long now, and they are absolutely right to take action.
"A company whose senior executives are grotesquely over-rewarded and whose journalists are callously undervalued does the cause of local journalism no good at all.
"The mood on the picket line and in the city-centre where members were leafleting the public was good-humoured, friendly and determined. They deserve our full backing."
The American owned Newsquest company makes good profits but imposed a pay freeze nearly three years ago.
The Sussex workers are also concerned about the transfer of jobs to another centre.
Red Pepper magazine
Members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) at the Newsquest company in Sussex have voted 91 percent for strike action, and 95 percent for action short of a strike in a secret ballot with a 82 percent turnout.
The papers involved include the daily Brighton Argus.
Journalists at Newsquest Hampshire have been on strike for two days as reported on The Workers United.
Tom Davies, an NUJ national executive member for London, visted the Southampton strikers and said: "Newsquest workers have had to endure pay freezes or below-inflation pay settlements for far too long now, and they are absolutely right to take action.
"A company whose senior executives are grotesquely over-rewarded and whose journalists are callously undervalued does the cause of local journalism no good at all.
"The mood on the picket line and in the city-centre where members were leafleting the public was good-humoured, friendly and determined. They deserve our full backing."
The American owned Newsquest company makes good profits but imposed a pay freeze nearly three years ago.
The Sussex workers are also concerned about the transfer of jobs to another centre.
Red Pepper magazine
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Low-paid journalists take on multi-national profits machine
Journalists employed in Hampshire by the US-owned Newsquest group are on strike over a thousand day pay freeze.
Senior journalists on the Southampton Echo and other titles earn less than £22,000 and have to live in an expensive area between London and the south coast of England.
Trainees earn much less.
Last year - while journalists' pay was frozen -Newsquest's highest paid director trousered a rise of more than twenty percent.
Members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) are on strike today and tomorrow and for two days next week.
Send messages of support to dailyechochapel@yahoo.co.uk .
A ballot for action over pay by Newsquest journalists in Sussex concludes tomorrow.
Newsquest, Britain’s second biggest regional newspaper publisher, is an arm of the big American company Gannett.
Gracia Martore, Gannett’s chief financial officer, said on Friday October 15 2010: "Let me once and for all dispel the myth that Newsquest doesn't make money. Newsquest makes a lot of money.”
Full story and picture
Journalists at The Independent are also balloting for action as reported on The Workers United.
Senior journalists on the Southampton Echo and other titles earn less than £22,000 and have to live in an expensive area between London and the south coast of England.
Trainees earn much less.
Last year - while journalists' pay was frozen -Newsquest's highest paid director trousered a rise of more than twenty percent.
Members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) are on strike today and tomorrow and for two days next week.
Send messages of support to dailyechochapel@yahoo.co.uk .
A ballot for action over pay by Newsquest journalists in Sussex concludes tomorrow.
Newsquest, Britain’s second biggest regional newspaper publisher, is an arm of the big American company Gannett.
Gracia Martore, Gannett’s chief financial officer, said on Friday October 15 2010: "Let me once and for all dispel the myth that Newsquest doesn't make money. Newsquest makes a lot of money.”
Full story and picture
Journalists at The Independent are also balloting for action as reported on The Workers United.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
National and local journalists driven to action over pay freezes and job cuts
Members of the National Union of Journalists are planning industrial action at newspapers across the South of England as anger boils over in the face of pay freezes and job cuts.
Journalists at The Independent and Independent on Sunday voted by 105 votes to one at a chapel (workplace branch) meeting in London yesterday to organise a ballot for indistrial action over a three year pay freeze and increased workloads.
NUJ members at Newsquest Southampton have called two 48-hour strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday November 9 and 10, and again on Tuesday and Wednesday November 16 and 17.
The dispute is over the continuing pay freeze at Newsquest.
On the first day the of action, the strikers will be protesting outside a Press Complaints Commission (PCC) open day event at Southampton Art Gallery where their editor is a guest speaker.
Journalists at Newsquest titles in Sussex - including the Brighton Argus - are also balloting for industrial action as reported on The Workers United.
Tomorrow more than 4,000 BBC journalists start a series of strikes over cuts to their pensions.
COMMENT:
It is vital that amid all the talk of the public sector trade unions organise and fight at penny pinching private sector companies.
These newspaper journalists are on the front line and other trade unionists can find out how to support them at the union's website.
Journalists at The Independent and Independent on Sunday voted by 105 votes to one at a chapel (workplace branch) meeting in London yesterday to organise a ballot for indistrial action over a three year pay freeze and increased workloads.
NUJ members at Newsquest Southampton have called two 48-hour strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday November 9 and 10, and again on Tuesday and Wednesday November 16 and 17.
The dispute is over the continuing pay freeze at Newsquest.
On the first day the of action, the strikers will be protesting outside a Press Complaints Commission (PCC) open day event at Southampton Art Gallery where their editor is a guest speaker.
Journalists at Newsquest titles in Sussex - including the Brighton Argus - are also balloting for industrial action as reported on The Workers United.
Tomorrow more than 4,000 BBC journalists start a series of strikes over cuts to their pensions.
COMMENT:
It is vital that amid all the talk of the public sector trade unions organise and fight at penny pinching private sector companies.
These newspaper journalists are on the front line and other trade unionists can find out how to support them at the union's website.
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