Friday, July 31, 2009

Keeping occupied

Was looking forward to the picket lines in Birmingham and Coventry on Thursday but instead had to make do with the satisfaction of the chapels' strong stands resulting in compulsory redundancies being withdrawn and staff being redeployed. Despite the allegations that our threatened action was negligent and reckless it was effective in stopping those who did not want to go from losing their jobs...and that's what a trade union is about.

As is happening in lots of other unions there was discussion about tactics for the dispute, even occupying, sitting in and other forms of more radical action. Members have rightly ruled nothing out in fighting to stop compulsory redundancies. Occupations were once common place in the media industry, particularly for some reason in magazine and book publishing. Now that they are spreading across other industries - and there is news today of another one at Thomas Cook in Dublin - media workers are seeing such tactics can be effective. I'm sure it won't be long before we see such action in a media company. Support the Thomas Cook workers here

Today we had a campaigns meeting putting in place details of fringe events at the Labour Party and Lib Dem conference as part of the campaign against top-slicing the BBC licence fee and booked tickets for travel to far-flung places - well Manchester, Brighton, Liverpool as we prepare to take our campaigns on the road. Have also finished off and sent out a branch newsletter, welcomed the excellent victory for press freedom in Ireland (yes, another one!), had a meeting with BBC World Service management about jobs in the South Asia service, written to members of the Local Media Commission established by the union to update them on the submissions, campaigning and other activity we've been involved and spoken to MPs and the IFJ about assistance to an Iranian journalist currently in hiding.

Hope the weather's good tomorrow for a barbecue chez Serwotka. Mark is not just an inspirational General Secretary of the PCS he's a pretty mean chef to boot...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very slippery Jeremy. The union said it was fighting to stop job cuts. As it is, you've not saved any jobs, all that's happened is people have moved around into other jobs. The net result is the same = fewer journalists. But as long as you're getting the subs in, I don't suppose you really care.