Journalists across Johnston Press are to be asked if they are prepared to take industrial action as part of a consultative ballot on the company’s pay freeze.
The National Union of Journalists plans to ask members their views after the publisher announced earlier this month that its pay freeze would continue for another six months.
The consultative ballot has received backing from the Johnston Press group chapel, so the union can find out the strength of feeling among members about the pay freeze and staffing levels.
It will also ask if members are prepared to take industrial action and the results of the survey will be taken back to the company, with the aim of securing talks with management.
Details about the ballot are still being finalised but it is expected to be sent out to members in the next few weeks.
Scottish NUJ organiser Paul Holleran said: “It is about the structure of how they handle redundancies and staffing levels and also the pay freeze. The fact that there is a pay freeze on top of job cuts has been too much.
“I have met with the Scottish management and they have set up meetings with myself and other chapel officials, so in Scotland talks are already taking place.”
Johnston Press told staff earlier this month that its pay freeze would be extended by another six months, putting salary reviews on hold until July at the earliest.
Following the announcement, chapel representatives held a conference call last week to discuss what action to take.
Johnston Press had not responded to requests for a comment at the time of publication.
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More posturing from a union that has had very little point as a representative of workers for as long as I can remember. As a one-time FOC, take it from me – save yourself the dues and tear up your card, NUJ is not even a toothless tiger but a comatose tabbycat
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In fairness, the NUJ – and in particular Miles Barter – was very good to me when I needed them in my hour of need.
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NUJ is just live every other union – an offshoot of labour, lead by a fatcat who pockets 100’s of thousands of members money. Wake up people.
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Ditto the NUJ helped me without question and greatly. Thanks Don McGlew and co… But if you want to change it, DO SOMETHING instead of whining away from a corner …
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The union has helped me twice when facing redundancy. However it’s a union not helped by apathetic hacks who moan about terms and conditions, but are never prepared to do anything about it. I was an FoC twice and lost count of the number of people who thought the union should ‘do’ something but would not get involved themselves.
Those monthly subs could be the best investment you ever made.
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It occurs to me that anyone working for Johnston Press should be grateful that their job has not yet been outsourced. I have some sympathy for the journalists though, as it appears that JP culls jobs on every level except the sales floor, where recruitment is on-going (through poorly designed job ads).
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I am sick and tired of reading comments from reporters about how tough a life they have working for JP. For years, advertising sales staff right across the group have always been the poor relations when it comes to salaries and unlike their editorial colleagues, they do not have the luxury of a union to back them up if they have a grievance of any description.
For them, industrial action is not an option, regardless of how unfairly they are treated and for many years, they certainly have been. Consider what they have to contend with on a daily basis… sky high sales targets, constant pressure from managers, massive changes to their normal working practices, a poor standard of advertisement design due to outsourcing, inadequate training, falling demand for print advertising and being rail roaded into selling on line advertising, customer complaints, baffling new rate structures, complicated sales software, endless lists of feature and supplement space to fill, the list goes on.
So before any more of you start another rant about how hard a life you have, try a week in some of the advertising sales offices and see how you cope.
JP Cost Cut Victim was right about sales staff still being recruited. Johnstons have finally woken up to the fact that they are the people who actually make the company profitable and keep everyone else in a job….. at least for the time being!
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AD Man you are right in many aspects of your comment, but please don’t throw in the old ‘ we keep you in a job’ … or the old favourite ‘we pay your wages’ comments. You think people would buy a paper if it had no editorial content ?
What if the advertising was not visualised to the high standard that the UK based studio produce. Don’t you think that those guys do you a massive favour in helping to sell that advertising space ?
Advertising is just one department. Editorial, Studio / Pre-Press, Newspaper Sales, Promotions, everyone is having a pretty Sh***y time of it.
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Does it really have to turn into an us-versus-them battle like this? In reality, newspapers need both journalism and advertising to survive – one can’t do much without the other. Some ad reps seem to feel they’re looked down on by journalists, but in reality, I doubt many journos could sell ad space. Both groups have different skills.
It does seem a bit like JP turns them against each other, however, by treating them both with such disdain and seeming to favour each over the other in different ways. How about a bit of unity to fight against what is happening to our once mighty local papers?
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I realise that there are many changes in the way sales reps are having to work at JP that have happened in a very short space of time, and I am sympathetic Ad Man, and hope you still get bonuses for hitting your targets. However, XJP is right – nobody buys a newspaper to look at the advertising, though well designed ads and features are an additional indicator of the quality of the product. If they look cheap, so does ‘the rag’. (You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but people do). Sadly, with the constraints of templates, a drop in the standard of advert design, errors in spelling and grammar (mostly in advertising), poor reproduction of ads (e.g. text not legible) no wonder Ad Man’s task is all the more difficult. It would be better to produce papers that are easier to sell into, than keep employing sales reps to chase after the falling number of quality advertisers that will. When I was made redundant from JP I thought it was because finances were so tight, but it appears there is money to spend, but on Micro TV, digital, or voluntary redundancy payouts etc. but not on print, design or pay rises.
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Well Said Ad Man,
Here at Northcliffe, we have waery, grey, pie eating cynics that contstantly look down on us ad reps, despite us bringing in the money for the company. In my 7 years service I have brough in over £1 million of business. I am proud, happy, and postive. Unfortunatly not everyone in my company shares the same view. I wish they would leave.
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