National Union of Journalists members at the Hampstead & Highgate Express will meet next month for a “post-mortem and to talk tactics”.

They claim they were forced to accept a pay deal much lower that they had been pushing for.

The union says journalists at the Archant-owned weekly will receive a 2.5 per cent pay rise in this month’s pay packet, backdated to April 1, following three months of negotiations.

But the chapel there had originally put in a pay claim for 5.6 per cent, which it said was necessary because pay deals over the past four years had not kept up with the cost of living.

Father of chapel Barry Reynolds told holdthefrontpage the claim had “probably been optimistic”, but members did not know what the company would be offering when it was made and they had worked out that to catch up in “real terms” they would have needed to get a rise of more than nine per cent.

He said: “Given that we haven’t had a decent pay rise for some time we thought 5.6 per cent was a legitimate claim.

“We had various negotiations but the company would not budge at all.”

As part of the negotiations the chapel told the company it would accept the 2.5 per cent if it was extended to trainee journalists at the paper, who had received increases to their pay bandings in January, but the company refused.

Barry added: “We still don’t consider this to be a satisfactory outcome but we feel we have taken it as far as we can go.

“Rather than reluctantly accepting the offer it has been imposed.

“We still feel pretty disgruntled about the whole thing and we have a union meeting planned for September where there will be a post-mortem on what’s gone on this year and we will discuss tactics for next year.”

Regional managing editor Richard Thomson confirmed to holdthefrontpage that a deal had been reached.

He said: “We certainly didn’t force anyone to accept the offer. It has been accepted and we go forward.” Do you have a story about the regional press?
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