National Union of Journalists president Chris Morley was father of chapel at the Birmingham Post & Mail for 14 years and has served on the union’s National Executive Council for more than four years. Here he writes for HoldtheFrontPage on how the union can make a difference.

Chris

Media bosses did their best to try to wipe out the National Union of Journalists from newsrooms in the 1990s.

But when new laws on union recognition came in, journalists took the chance to turn their desire to be represented by the NUJ into reality.

We have had to work hard to win the trust of many younger journalists who had little or no experience of a trade union. But our growing membership is the ultimate litmus test.

As a union we have just passed the 40,000 membership mark for the first time in our near 100-year history.

Without the union, personal contracts and “performance” rises created unfairness and discrimination.

High profile NUJ campaigning and effective action has helped significantly boost wage rates throughout the industry.

In many companies, the anarchy of individual pay has been replaced by negotiated structures where journalists now know where they stand.

The NUJ is in the vanguard of highlighting the damage to the profession by massive and reckless job cuts.

It took a 24-hour national strike to bring BBC bosses to the negotiating table when they wanted to fire 3,700 workers – and months of painstaking talks to put the brake on compulsory redundancies.

With the onslaught on media jobs so intense, the NUJ response is a nationwide campaign, Journalism Matters, to demand the survival of quality journalism.

And just as the NUJ stands up for journalists in the workplace, it stands by them over professional matters.

Take the Robin Ackroyd case where the Mersey Care NHS Trust was prepared to spend £120,000 pursuing him over his sources.

Or freelance photographer Alan Lodge who was arrested, charged and had his camera equipment seized when he tried to take pictures of armed police in Nottingham.

Legally, the union won £1m last year for members who found themselves the victims of unfair dismissal, copyright theft or some other injustice.

We are alive to the changes happening in the media and have a New Media section within the union working on behalf of the growing number of journalists making their living solely from the Internet.

And thousands of journalists have used the union’s acclaimed professional training which has expanded to fill gaps left by employers.

Why not check out the NUJ’s revamped website www.nuj.org.uk to see what else the union is doing for journalists?