union help


Calm amid the storm


Having freelance fears on top of an anxiety disorder makes union support invaluable, says Tom Sykes


ALAMY STOCK PHOTO G


eneralised anxiety disorder affects 7.5 per cent of people in England, according to NHS survey data.


I was diagnosed with the condition


in 2004 when I was 24 and have been managing it since. I probably haven’t helped myself by


working as a freelance in situations that would frighten most people. Among other edgy assignments, I’ve reported on President Rodrigo Duterte’s extrajudicial killings in the Philippines and covered the first presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire after its second civil war. Oddly, though, some of my worst


anxiety episodes have not been caused by objectively stressful conditions – I have had panic attacks during pleasant lunches with colleagues at a Manila university and while travelling in relative luxury across the English Channel. Nonetheless, since I joined the NUJ in 2012, whatever work-related psychic mess I’ve got myself into, invariably the union has come to the rescue. In my 20s and early 30s, I relied


solely on my freelance earnings. As I recount in my book Te Years of Travelling Anxiously, this was an often jittery existence. I was as worried about not having enough money as I was about future opportunities. I was spending too much time


hunched over a screen and too little exercising in fresh air. Working for publications all over the world in different time zones, I had to pull all-nighters to meet deadlines. Te anxiety would skyrocket when a


20 | theJournalist


publication would be slow paying or not pay the agreed fee. Tis was where my NUJ membership came in very handy. On one occasion, I noticed I’d


been underpaid for two articles I had written by a publication that shall remain nameless. I wrote to the editor and we argued


by email for a while about the fee that had been agreed. Te editor would not be persuaded even when I shared the relevant email about the fee. I called the NUJ who told me that I


was not the first member to complain about this publication. An hour after our call, I was copied into an email from the NUJ to the publication that, in no uncertain terms, requested I be remunerated what I was owed as soon as possible. It was a clear and firm message, and


it worked – the following day I was called by the owner of the publication from the plane he was travelling on. After making some dismal excuses – his accountant had just died, the publication was in debt and so forth – he said I’d be sent the outstanding amount later that day. And so it happened. “Hurrah for the NUJ!” I wrote in my thank-you email to the union. In the unregulated – and barely


unionised – digital media landscape, fees for assignments vary enormously. Early on in my career, whenever


an editor or a client of any kind asked me what I would charge for a job of journalistic work, I’d clam up. If I aimed too high, would I put them off and lose a


“


Sykes (above top) was threatened with legal action after interviewing an activist critical of Filipino president Duterte (above)


vital work opportunity? If I aimed too low, would I undersell myself and effectively connive in my own exploitation? Tis is where the NUJ’s


recommended pay rates have come in extremely useful. I no longer fret


about receiving a fair wage for my labour. At other times, my freelance’s anxiety


has been defused by calm and simple advice from the NUJ. After I published an interview


with a Filipino activist critical of the Duterte regime, a political opponent of this gentleman wrote to the editor of the publication the piece appeared in and threatened to sue it – and me. I panicked. While I was pretty sure


the article was not defamatory – it had been checked over by the publication’s lawyer, after all – I went into a tailspin. Would I lose my house, career, reputation? I contacted the NUJ and was


The anxiety would skyrocket when a publication would be slow paying or not pay the agreed fee


advised to ignore this empty threat, which was clearly designed to intimidate journalists out of reporting on matters of public interest. And the NUJ was right – neither I nor the publication ever heard from the would-be litigant again. In an era of AI, clickbait, failing


funding models and all those other modern challenges to our profession, the beleaguered freelance can rely on the NUJ to help reduce the day-to-day anxieties of trying to earn a living and doing their work to the best of their ability.


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