29/02/2008

A motion praising staff at The Herald group of newspapers is being presented to this year’s annual conference of the National Union of Journalists.

Being presented by the Glasgow branch of the NUJ to the Annual Delegates Conference, taking place in April, the motion reads: “The ADM applauds the Newsquest chapels at the Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald who stood so successfully against the belligerent attempts by management to make changes without any consultation with the NUJ chapels and in breach of the house agreement.”

This year’s ADM is taking place in Belfast, between April 3 - 6. Last year, Herald group journalists staged successful walk-out protests against the threat of compulsory redundancy against a colleague at the Evening Times.

The motion continues: “This ADM recognises the significant effect the establishment of the Newsquest NUJ Federated Chapel had in bringing the management to the realisation that they faced a much stronger, united and larger union fight than they had believed, or judged, possible. The history of the NUJ shows that where federated or Imperial chapels have existed the outcomes for chapels under attack have been better.

“With this in mind , the ADM instructs the NEC to create a campaign to establish federates chapels across the union and ringfence funding within the annual budget to make this possible and to help pay the initial costs of set-up.”

Two other motions are being presented to ADM from Scotland. They are:

71 - Glasgow branch - ADM reaffirms that ‘The Journalist’ is central to the NUJ’s campaigns and communications strategy. Moreover, conference strongly believes that direct distribution to union members at their workplace will significantly improve the influence of the NUJ journal and its access to members.

ADM therefore believes that:  * ‘The Journalist’ should become a more visible daily presence on the NUJ website; * in future, every edition of the journal should be produced in PDF or equivalent format; * distribution of ‘The Journalist’ should in future normally be carried out by e-mail whenever possible; and * printed editions of ‘The Journalist’, distributed by post to all NUJ members shall normally be restricted to no more than two  a year.

ADM instructs the NEC to conduct a review of the production and distribution of ‘The Journalist’, together with the NUJ website, to assist in implementing the above.

Saving: £100,000

82 - Edinburgh and District branch - This ADM instructs the NEC to mount a campaign against the practice of newspapers and journals getting free copy by encouraging citizen journalism and free blog articles, which are then published in the hard copies of the publications.

Cost: £1000


* Send your Scottish media news and gossip, in the strictest confidence, to  info@allmediascotland.com