06 Oxford gold


Oxford NUJ branch secretary Anna Wagstaff reviews an extraordinary year when the branch helped members during the pandemic and got involved in local disputes


T


he big issue for all of us in Oxford branch this year has been dealing with the demands of working from home.


A hardy bunch of our commitee members atended NUJ online workshops and trawled through documents to glean information about staying safe and sane during lockdown, including how to get help in supplementing lost income, health and safety tips, and how to deal with stress, zoom fatigue and overcrowded and unsuitable workspaces. Te changes and problems brought


by the pandemic led to the need for expert advice to help chapels negotiate agreements that work well for all members with different – and changing – needs. A huge shout out to the Taylor & Francis chapel commitee, of the publisher of academic journals, for their incredible work throughout lockdown and in current negotiations over future paterns of remote/workplace working. Tanks also to Pam Morton,


who started work as NUJ national organiser for the Books and Magazines sector in the summer and certainly hit the ground running. Oxford is home to many publishers. Newsquest, owner of the Oxford Mail and Times, lived up to their reputation of having no interest in the wellbeing of staff when they issued notices of termination of contracts to all our members, aſter the chapel declined a ‘proposal’ to their end time-and-half pay for working on most bank holidays. Te company sought to use this fire and rehire strategy to force staff to sign up to worse terms and conditions, or face having their contracts terminated. Our young chapel responded


brilliantly to this intimidating move, which stood to save Newsquest a paltry £2,000 a year. Tey stuck to a collective approach and negotiated. Branch members joined the campaign and got MPs and community activists on board to tell the Oxford Mail to ‘Stop bullying your journalists’. Newsquest was name-checked in Parliament and at


TUC Congress for its intimidatory action – and the dispute was covered in the local and trade press and ITV news.


Our big project for 2020-21 was a joint survey with the Oxford Society of Young Publishers and Oxford Publishing Society to learn about the pros and cons of working from home. Its findings, based on almost 1,000 responses, have informed the NUJ’s work on negotiating future working practices and was picked up by the Bookseller. Te project continues to run. An invitation to members of the Oxford Coalition of Black Communities and Communities of Colour led to a very constructive discussion in April about the need to reflect the experiences of Oxford’s many Black and ethnic minority communities in our local news reporting. We are now working with Oxford Brookes University to reach out to sixth formers from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds to entice them to consider a career in what is an overwhelmingly white, middle-class profession. Five delegates from our branch


took part in the virtual delegate meeting in May where we tabled several policy seting motions. Oxford NUJ Annual Report 2021: htps://oxfordnuj.wordpress.com/


BRANCH


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