If you are happy with the original plan, that’s your choice. I think you are wrong, and so do plenty of others. That opposition is not based on obscure or imagined adherences to outdated sectarian positions, but on a genuine concern about the direction the original plan would take the union in.

There seems to be rather a lot of irritation at the membership actually asserting a point of view from sections of an NEC that seems to have forgotten it is the guardian of membership wishes between DMs, and not a kitchen cabinet. I’m sure members will draw their own conclusions.

It was brought up at the NEC by a member of the Socialist Workers Party, although even he seemed half hearted about its contents,

Either its authors are curiously naive about political persuasion, or their intention was some kind of grandstanding to an audience other than the National Executive.

And it’s a bit rich, and slightly disingenuous, to make criticism of the timing of the circulation given the circumstances of the original NEC vote. The FT chapel have taken time to deliver on a request made by the members, and examining accounts and constructing the kind of well-thought out and argued document that the union’s leadership does not seem to have been able to produce takes time. I think the fact that they managed to get the document together in time for the NEC is to be commended.

What’s contained in the Alternative Plan makes far more industrial, political and financial sense than the original Recovery Plan, in my opinion.

Why was it only emailed to NEC the day before the meeting? The recovery plan was adopted nearly two months ago.

Why won’t the authors of this document put their name to it (while demanding transparency of others)?

NEC had no real opportunity to digest all the reams of information it was presented with mostly quite late in the day, and it was put to the meeting (the rescue plan) as a take it or leave it affair.

There was huge pressure put on the meeting to accept the plan as it stood, and we were told in no uncertain terms that failing to accept it would be to undermine the viability of the union.

Whichever camp one believes, both sides of the story were derived from exactly the same information. Having examined the accounts made available to me,(past ten years) it is clear which I think is the more well thought out and explained.

As I mentioned, I only wish we had had this much information laid out in such a readable manner available to us before the NEC voted on the ‘Official’ Rescue Plan.

Good to see that we are putting our brains into gear before openning our mouths! Abolishing industrial councils will go a long way to delivering the savings that we need to make. They only duplicate everything the NEC & ADM should be doing – and each meeting consumes at least three man/woman days of employees’ time.

Anyone who is against cutting the sea of paper that is the main problem has to ask why the NUJ needs more layers of bureaucracy than any small union & most of the larger ones.

All these extra councils & committees only water down ADM’s authority and the ability of the NEC to run the union between ADMs.

I am also against one-off levies. Most of these won’t be paid.

Our top priority has to be to recruit another 2,000 members. There are about 80K journalists in the UK. We have about 35K of them.

- Bro Chris Youett.

I only wish myself and all the other NEC members had had this or something like it before the last NEC meeting.

I hope it will be discussed today. Unfortunately I can’t be there.

Pete Jenkins