By Pete Murray, NUJ vice president

A one-day strike at the Glasgow-based Daily Record and Sunday Mail titles has brought the NUJ’s campaign of resistance to the jobs carnage across the UK and Ireland to Scotland in the most forceful and determined way so far.

Following weeks of unproductive talks – and management’s refusal to consider dozens of volunteers for redundancy as an alternative to forcing through at least 20 compulsories – the NUJ chapel voted by 85% to strike.

It was a resounding result, which led to the 24-hour walkout on 4 April and a continuous work-to-rule. Further action is scheduled for 10 April.

The chapel is also resisting plans to force through an unpaid increase in working hours, as well as damaging cuts to the Trinity Mirror pension scheme – all on top of the group-wide pay freeze.

Trinity Mirror bosses – singing from the same hymn sheet as so many other proprietors – blame dwindling profits, rising costs and the effects of the recession for these cuts.

In a message to staff on the eve of the strike, Record/Mail managing director Mark Hollinshead spoke of “a time of economic crisis and cataclysmic change in the newspaper industry”.

Yet the Sunday Mail, Scotland’s biggest selling newspaper with just under 444,000 readers, and Daily Record made profits of £15-18m last year.

If that’s the economic arithmetic of “cataclysmic change” we see no reason why it adds up to pay freezes and sackings for our members.

NUJ Left argues that journalists are no different from other workers fighting to preserve public services under attack from bosses who have no strategy for surviving the recession except sackings and closures.

Within the union’s strategy, there can be little doubt that a united left movement inside the NUJ has made a significant difference in the last six months, building the case for a fightback in every workplace where our members have the organisation and the confidence to put the question of industrial action against the cuts to their members in a ballot.

It is also clear that the union’s case for a drastic rethink over rules of media ownership is beginning to win support among the public and the wider union movement as well as politicians.

Ready for direct action

We must also be aware that the agenda of the fightback is changing fast. The Record/Mail strike began as parents and supporters bedded down for the first night of what they say will be an indefinite occupation of two Glasgow primary schools threatened with closure.

The resistance campaign is a magnificent example of a self organised working class movement, built up in a matter of months to challenge Glasgow City Council’s New Labour agenda of closures and privatisation of services.

Elsewhere, the occupation by workers at the Prisme packaging factory in Dundee has rightly been hailed as a model of direct action to challenge the literal bankruptcy of the bosses.

Thousands of Scottish university students were are the forefront of the wave of occupations of university buildings across the UK in protest at Israel’s criminal bombardment of Gaza.

We should be aware that such direct action might be coming to our industry soon. We should be ready to respond when it does. 

Our case is clear. The last year has seen powerful, profitable media companies sacking thousands of workers simply to maintain margins and shareholder dividends.

The consequence is less scrutiny of local authorities, government agencies, business and planning decisions and poorer coverage of local community issues.

Put simply: it is damaging freedom of the press in the UK and damaging the public’s right to know the truth about those in authority.

So our campaign is not just that we have the right to fight for our jobs. We have a public duty to defend our jobs and media diversity itself.

Posted by Rich Simcox

Tags: industrial action, job cuts, National Union of Journalists, Newspapers, NUJ, NUJ Left, strike