The three main unions at the BBC: NUJ, Bectu and Unite are organising the action in protest against plans to cut pensions. NUJ members voted by more than 90 per cent to strike.

The top brass at the BBC are proposing to cut the link between salary and pension by putting a one percent cap on any pension increase. Managers claim that the pension fund is in debt to nearly £2 billion – this is rejected by the three unions: NUJ, Bectu and Unite.

The pension attack is part of a series of attacks on the BBC and its staff such as pay, threats to the World Service and government intentions to sell-off parts of the public body.

The NUJ Left supports the strikes and will be visiting picket lines across the county. Please download this petition, get you’re fellow workers to sign it and take it along to a picket line near you.

More than 100 trade unionists packed into the London Welsh Centre on Thursday night to hear the NUJ’s general secretary Jeremy Dear and a host of leading union activists call for a powerful protest in Brighton next weekend at Labour party conference.

Fresh from the TUC in Liverpool, Jeremy spoke about the government’s lack of political will – unemployment can be beaten, but it means a change of priorities from the banks to working people, he said.

Mark Flower from the Vestas occupation got a standing ovation before he even spoke. He went on to describe how he and 16 other workers had thrust climate change to the top of the agenda in the union movement, in the face of lies from his bosses, police aggression and government inaction.

Sasha Callaghan of the UCU said now was not the time to stay silent and not “rock the boat” as the election approached – we had to shout now for an alternative. Kevin Courtney from the NUT executive picked up this theme and made a passionate speech for unions to co-ordinate immediate action for jobs.

Lyndsey German for the Stop the War Coalition made the connection between the current crisis and the billions wasted on criminal wars and the Trident nuclear weapons system. The hall applauded the TUC’s historic decision to call for a boycott of Israeli goods.

LSE student Estelle Cooch from Right to Work talked about how her economics lecturers apologise to students every day that what they are about to learn is being proved totally wrong by the recession.

Finally Richard McEwan of the UCU at Tower Hamlets college brought the hall to its feet in solidarity with the all-out strike of teachers there, which is now into its fourth week.

I came away with leaflets, posters, stickers, papers and other material to distribute at work. As well as tickets for Brighton. Please email me on david.crouch10@btinternet.com if you need any.

Surviving NUJ members at the Express titles are currently going through yet another redundancy exercise.

Richard Desmond’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for journalistic blood demands the sacrifice of a further 96 London jobs from a total of 600 across the Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Express, Daily Star Sunday and their associated magazines.

The Glasgow office is to lose a quarter of its staff – that is 10 from just 40 serving four national titles.

Initial proposals, full of words like “eliminate” and “review”, indicate that no one is safe. Merging desks between titles and copy-sharing are strong possibilities.

A nine-day fortnight is to be brought in to replace the current four-day week. These are of course four-night weeks as these 10-hour shifts go on until the early hours of the following day.

District reporters look set to be consigned to the history books, replaced by agency copy. Management here have recently been successful in engaging outside suppliers of words and pictures in talks about renewed contracts – where they have agreed to cut their prices by as much as 16%.

The 1 January pay review for this year was postponed until 1 June. Then it was postponed completely. On the day we were due to commence pay negotiations for 2010, the company announced its latest cull.

Daily Express Editor Peter Hill told me in an email: “No one wants to see job cuts but survival is the issue now. Revenues from circulation and advertising are drastically down and there is no prospect of any improvement. The bills have to be paid. The company has to be viable.”

No mention there about the journalistic reputation and credibility of the titles having to survive. No thought of restoring the Daily Express to its former glories.

What has happened to Desmond’s plan to overtake the journalistic juggernaut that is the Daily Mail? He is not going to overtake anyone while he reduces the Daily Express to a title whose staff could easily fit inside a Smart car.

The NUJ chapel has warned management before that it views these constant cuts with anger. We believe they herald the demise of the Daily Express and Sunday Express as national titles. But still the redundancy exercises come – and they are getting closer together.

Redundancy exercises have become as regular as Daily Express splashes on the McCanns, or Jordan and Peter Andre front pages in the Daily Star.

When Desmond bought the Express titles in 2001 I think he thought he was buying Express Dairies as he has been milking us ever since. He has paid himself millions in both salary and pension and then says the company is fighting for survival. I wonder why.

You are demanding a new direction tonight. NUJ members at the Express and Daily Star are desperate for management to take a new direction too – away from badly-managed decline and towards meaningful investment in quality journalism and quality titles.

See you in Brighton.

Reporters know that in working for the Mail you hand over a little piece of your soul when you file your copy.

The deal acknowledges that any vaguely sentient newsgatherer knows it is odd, at best, to ignore the otherwise newsworthy ambitions and achievements of whole sections of society.

As Nick Davies discusses in Flat Earth News, the editorial line has a corrosive effect on the kind of journalism its journalists practise. But you take your poison, or you move on.

The same can not be said for the Guardian. Like the BBC, the desire to work there for many is cultural and political, as well as journalistic.

In recent years, however, GMG management has been chipping away at the group’s founding public service ethos that is not just important to journalists on the left, but also a vital part of a diverse and free press.

Journalists and readers in Manchester, for example, rightly wonder how “a sense of duty to the reader and the community” is best served by closing local offices and cutting jobs, while handing out massive executive bonuses.

It is also difficult to see how anyone could seriously contemplate closing down the country’s oldest Sunday newspaper or turning it into an irrelevant mid-week magazine.

The possibility that this is a softening-up exercise to push through further cuts in London is as disgraceful as it is worrying for the future of the Guardian and the Observer.

Amid all this controversy, management is busy attacking the creative rights of photographers by saying it will no longer pay to re-use images.

As photojournalist and NUJ Left member Jonathan Warren says on his blog – in a post linking the issue to the Guardian’s appeal for free Flickr images of the London Climate Camp – “photographers rely on reuse fees to earn a living”.

The timing of ‘Flickr-gate’ could not be better. Or worse. Photographers will be protesting against the rights grab outside the Guardian offices in York Way, London, at 9.30am on Tuesday 1 September.

Some freelance photographers have already said they will boycott the Guardian until it negotiates a new deal.

And if the bosses don’t get back to their roots with some “honesty, integrity and fairness” soon, other journalists and readers could well follow suit.

It is highly unlikely the Mail will benefit from this. But the Guardian, as a newspaper and a group, will certainly suffer.

Congratulations to the chapel members who mounted a solid, united resistance to these proposals, voting massively in favour of a strike.

Our members in the midlands will take strength from this and it will give confidence to other Trinity chapels currently balloting for industrial action.

Update, 29 July: Congratulations also to the Coventry Newspapers chapel that announced today it has agreed to call off its planned action for next week after saving three jobs under threat.

There are still talks over the future of a photographer and a reporter but signs are hopeful that a deal will be reached and no one will be made redundant against their will. These are important victories.

Of those who voted, 84% opted to take industrial action and 97% for action short of a strike after the company announced plans to close nine titles and cut 17 journalists’ jobs in the region.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ deputy general secretary, pledged the union’s full support if members are forced to take action to defend their colleagues’ jobs.

Other Trinity members also considering their futures will hopefully take heart from this result and have more confidence that the battles they face are better fought together.

Solidarity to the Trinity journalists and practical support where its needed.

Members at the Evening Gazette are particularly angry that they are facing more cuts after jobs went six months ago, the NUJ reports.

Earlier this week members in Birmingham unanimously passed a motion of no confidence in the management of Trinity’s titles in the region.

With colleagues in Coventry they are also balloting for action over plans to close nine titles and cut 17 journalists’ jobs in the midlands.

The NUJ has also announced that 80 members at the TM-owned Chronicle and Journal group in Newcastle are to ballot over compulsory redundancies.

Clearly what Trinity does in one part of its company, it follows up in another. These are not simply local decisions, driven purely by local circumstances.

They are an orchestrated attack not only on the very livelihoods of our members, but also on the kind of journalism they are able to provide to their readers.

The union’s response should of course be equally determined. We need to support these chapels and help them to co-ordinate their fightback.

NUJ Left activists should give whatever practical support we can to these crucial disputes, and encourage other members facing cuts across the country to join the fightback and discuss locally, regionally and nationally how best to organise themselves to campaign and win.

When in April Ian Tomlinson died after being hit by a police officer during the G20 protests, it was professional journalism that turned a citizen’s shaky video footage into an investigation that is still turning up stories.

And while accusations of chequebook journalism were initially levelled at the Telegraph when it first unleashed the MPs’ expenses scandal, there is no doubt that the ongoing revelations are the result of old-fashioned legwork and rigorous fact-checking.

The ground had already been cleared for the Telegraph of course by the excellent work done by Heather Brooke, whose persistent and patient freedom of information campaign ought to receive far more recognition than it has outside of the NUJ.

Today’s scoop by Nick Davies revealing the practices at the News of the World under Andy Coulson, shows what media organisations can achieve when they give their journalists time and freedom to cultivate sources and properly research important stories that are genuinely in the public interest – rather than just give them the phone numbers of ethically-dubious private detectives and ask them to go fishing. It is a red-letter day indeed when you find yourself agreeing with Andrew Neil.

It ought to be obvious that if the onslaught of cuts in our industry continues then the future of quality journalism like this will be under serious threat.

If we don’t fight, all we’ll be left with are skeleton-staffed newsrooms where the word hack means nothing more than what editors expect their reporters to do to get their stories.

Following successful events in London and Glasgow earlier this year, tomorrow’s event will be in Stockport, chosen because the Guardian Media Group has abandoned the area by closing offices.

An industrial action ballot is underway at Signal Radio in Stoke after the three news staff were told their jobs were being cut.

And members at Trinity Mirror titles in the midlands are considering the next steps after management announced it plans to close nine titles and axe 17 journalists’ jobs.

This followed shameful accusations by management that the union was “scaremongering” after it revealed the proposals were outlined in a leaked internal document.

After a week of refusing to come clean, TM then announced even more severe cuts than the NUJ had predicted.

The benefit gig, organised by comedian and NUJ member Julia Brosnan who is also performing, is on Sunday 5 July at 7.30pm in the Baker’s Vault, Market Place, Stockport SK1 1EU. Admission is £5 waged/£3 unwaged.

Members in the south west are also angry about redundancies at Northcliffe subsidiary Cornwall and Devon Media, publishers of weekly titles and magazines across the two counties.

Almost 20 people attended a revival meeting of the branch earlier this month and they were joined by regional rep and NUJ Left activist Tim Lezard and NUJ national official David Ayrton.

Stuart Fraser, whose campaigning against redundancies at CDM was followed by notice of his own redundancy, was elected chair of the revived branch. Michelle Nicholson was elected secretary and Anna Whitney treasurer.

Stuart’s campaign has included a direct protest to Northcliffe chairman Lord Rothermere in a letter copied to colleagues and Cornish MPs.

As the cuts continue to damage the quality of journalism our members are able to provide to their communities, it is essential that NUJ members work together in this way.

NUJ Left encourages other activists in areas without a functioning branch to call a meeting and revive activity, and we will offer any support that is necessary.

For more about the new branch and campaigns in the area, contact Stuart on stuartfraser207@btinternet.com or 01579 362667.