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Birmingham chapel forces anti-union firm to negotiate on pay.
Now let's do the same in London magazines
Pay breakthrough at Birmingham Post and Mail
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Some editors seem more than happy to use their publications as hate-sheets. What can the union do to stop racist reporting?
![[Tide of lies]](pix/Lies.gif)
1965: Some of the first victims of Old Labour pandering to racists. The Wilson government issued a White Paper on Commonwealth Immigration that started from the premise that the "problem" was black immigration.
Illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, bootleggers and the scum of the earth drug smugglers have targeted our beloved coastline for some unwanted attention.
We are left with the backdraft of a nation's human sewage and no cash to wash it down the drain.
Dover Express leader, 1 October 1998
They rush upon us without a trade, thoroughly helpless and incapable of doing aught else then offering - if taught - to do the work of English men and women... Their unclean habits, their wretched clothing and miserable food enable them to perpetuate existence upon a pittance.
Manchester City News, 12 May 1888
Filth like the quotes on this page help to spread racist myths and they encourage racist violence. They are also against the NUJ's Code of Conduct
: journalists should neither write "nor process material which encourages discrimination, prejudice or hatred".
The second quote concerned Jews fleeing the murderous pogroms in eastern Europe. Not even the editor of the Dover Express would dream of writing an anti-semitic diatribe like that today. Why does he think that he can get off with his attack on Roma Gypsies fleeing appalling persecution in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and Albanian Muslims escaping the war at home?
The sad truth is because union organisation is weak. Journalists don't just suffer from poor staffing and low pay in anti-union companies like those that own the Dover Express and Brighton Argus. Editorial standards are also low on such papers. Collective organisation is the key to raising standards, securing proper training - and preventing our bosses from using their publications as hate-sheets to attack refugees, black people, gays, trade unionists and all the usual targets.
Articles in the Express, Argus and Folkestone Herald have whipped up racism on the south coast. They have encouraged fascist groups like the National Front and British National Party to organise marches in the area.
It is a problem in London, too. The Evening Standard recently ran a feature claiming that benefits available to refugees in Britain were the most generous in Europe!
The Labour government intends to introduce yet another law to make it harder to seek asylum in Britain. Even though Home Secretary Jack Straw condemned the Tories' last asylum act - passed just three years ago - and promised to repeal it "lock, stock and barrel", he has now drawn up his own asylum bill.
The government claims that "immigration control will help promote racial equality." It simply panders to the racists and reinforces the myth that refugees are "bogus", or treated "too generously".
First, we should check our facts. Don't assume that because it was published elsewhere it must be true. Often, to do that we need to resist bullying editors who pare down resources and impose impossible deadlines.
Second, don't use words that lazy editors throw around at news meetings. Has there been a flood of refugees when, in fact, there are around 350 in the Dover area out of a population of 107,000? Or a tide, invasion, inrush, inundation or influx? Provide the real context.
Third, we can act on the motion presented on this page, which will be debated at this month's branch meeting.
The NUJ's Code of Conductsays:
10. A journalist shall only mention a person's race, colour, creed, illegitimacy, marital status (or lack of it), gender or sexual orientation if this information is strictly relevant. A journalist shall neither originate nor process material which encourages discrimination, ridicule, prejudice or hatred on any of the above-mentioned grounds.
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For the first time in 10 years the Birmingham Post and Mail has unblocked its collective ears and dared to talk about pay with the NUJ chapel.
The result was a 6.1% across-the-board rise in basic pay, better starting salaries for trainees and moves towards an £18,000 minimum salary for senior journalists. This year's pay award is worth an average of £1,200.
Profit-related pay is being killed off (the government has told firms to end this blatant tax fiddle by 2000.) The company's despised "merit" pay is also being junked.
In addition, the company has stopped its nasty habit of denying pay rises to those who start after the annual pay review date of 1 January.
The Mirror Group-owned Post and Mail first derecognised the NUJ for pay bargaining, but it was increasingly hard to get commitments out of the directors on other subjects as well.
But we continued to put in well-argued annual pay claims.
In 1997 trainees started on a disgraceful £8,500, but two years of pressure from the chapel has pushed this up to £10,275 - a 21% rise - with a £2,000 salary rise within eight months of being taken on.
Senior Post and Mail editor Ian Dowell has promised that, although official collective bargaining structures would not come in before the government's Fairness at Work Bill became law, the chapel would then be recognised.
This bargaining breakthrough will aid our forthcoming recruitment drive.
It is a reward for all those years of toil by the chapel when management tried to marginalise us and hoped we would quietly go into a corner and die.
We didn't and, like unions everywhere, we are back.
By Father of Chapel Chris MorleyContact the branch