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meaningful work-life balance. Pregnancy and maternity discrimination that cuts away opportunities from talented women. The cult of presenteeism. The male dominance in senior roles. The BBC has woken up to these concerns – although there remains a massive issue of loss of faith and trust. The median gap has fallen from 9.3 to 7.6 per cent, with an action plan in place to get to 2020. The mean gap is also down, from 10.7 to 8.4 per cent. While Auntie has become something of a poster girl of pay inequity, the BBC is much better than the rest of the media workforce. Every newspaper group and


broadcaster that has covered and, in some cases revelled in, criticising the BBC on this issue has a worse record in their own back-yard. The corporation is way down the Press Gazette’s league table of pay gap offenders, with the Economist Group, Dow Jones, the Telegraph and Mirror Group Newspapers showing the largest median hourly pay gaps.


Of course, we have higher expectations of the BBC; our public service broadcaster should set the standards. But it’s a fact that the media industry is – from a position of being woefully inadequate on these issues – now feeling exposed, putting them in the position of taking seriously an issue they have blithely ignored for so long. So this is very much a work in progress – one for which we need more reps wanting to be involved in this part of the battle. We’ll continue to roll out more support and training to reps and get chapel committees to organise around these issues in the workplace. The NUJ’s strength has always been our activists and reps – it’s vital they are properly equipped and have the confidence to go out and persuade colleagues to work together to ensure chapels are strong and capable of deploying their collective muscle on the whole range of issues that make a difference to their working lives.


Diary


Workers’ beer High on recognition triumph, the Springer Nature chapel scored another coup as they gathered to celebrate. Company CEO Daniel Ropers astonished activists when he joined their victory party. Indeed, as the bar float ran dry, Ropers suggested a round on him. MoC Michelle Gregory politely declined – management largess was ill-suited to a union bash, she said. No doubt she is planning a more substantial raid on corporate funds once pay talks commence.


Working-class hero London Freelance members were astonished to find David Bailey coming along in person to picking up his 40-year Life Membership certificate to add to his CBE received from the Queen. Swinging London’s favourite


snapper captured the classless Sixties of Twiggy, Mary Quant and the Beatles, and later moved on to photographing Her


Pennie Quinton


audience at Headland House. “What Corbyn needs is a Caribbean mum to tell him, ‘You have to try harder, you have to be beter, don’t come whining to me’.” Of course, acquiring new parents as you turn 70 is beyond even visionary leaders. Accepting that, Younge hoped that Diane Abbot might serve as surrogate. “Maybe she can give him a clip round the ear,” he said. Gary Younge page 7


Majesty. His PA banned photos at the event, so LFB chair Pennie Quinton used her skills as an artist to capture his image. As he told her, he was much more into painting than photography these days it seemed appropriate.


Caribbean mum What will it take for Jeremy Corbyn to enter Number 10? Guardian editor-at-large Gary Younge shared an idea with a sell-out


See you in court Billionaire media mogul Denis O’Brien has sued many a media outlet, but recently lost a defamation case against the Sunday Business Post for an article about him being among a large group of big borrowers at the time of the banking collapse in Ireland. Te jury dismissed his case, which could leave him with €1m legal costs. He is thought to have been landed with a similar sum last year when his atempt to sue the Oireachtas (parliament) for discussing elements of his finances in their deliberations was thrown out by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the FT reports his newspaper group, Independent News & Media, has been approached for a takeover.


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