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from 2008 our income would be €7.8m, about


€2.5m higher than now, provided we had maintained the same number of members. However, our numbers are not the same. Despite significant efforts by officials and members, membership has declined and paying membership has fallen by 21.8 per cent over the last ten years, from 28,170 to 22,027. Yet while membership in traditional recruitment areas where staff cuts have been deep and cruel is declining, membership in broadcasting, freelance and new media has been increasing slowly over the past 20 years.


The UK’s Office of


National Statistics shows that journalism and PR jobs are growing overall in the UK, and this is probably matched in Ireland. We must find ways to recruit in new areas of growth, such as social media and content management, whilst most of our activists still work in traditional areas that are probably now close to maximum potential recruitment. But it would be foolish to imagine that we will find it easy or instant to recruit the 9,259 full members we now need at current subs rates to make up the income shortfall we have built for ourselves. We also need to continue supporting our members; encouraging them to fight for better workplace conditions, the key purposes of the union. To do that we rely heavily on our hard- working organisers and other union staff but


We must find ways to recruit in new areas of growth, such as social media and content


staff cost money and whilst we all would like more of them out there in workplaces with our members doing what they do best, without a subs increase that would simply build our deficit. If subscriptions are not increased by at least 15 per cent in 2020 and a further 10 per cent in 2021, alongside strategies such as a targeted change in membership categories and recruitment areas and a serious activist-led membership recruitment campaign, significant further cuts in union spending will be required. This will reduce our capacity to assist our members that will reduce our effectiveness as a union leading to further resignations and a vicious downward spiral. No one likes to pay more, and it is an understandable concern that an increase in subs will lead to a fall-off in recruitment, but this is not consistent with the facts.


Membership patterns in the wake of previous increases in subs in April 2014, and the change to earnings-related subs, April 2016, show there was a rise in the number of people joining the union in the three-month period following the change. The numbers lapsing or deciding to leave the union was relatively unchanged, in the same before and after periods. So the NEC believes that whilst a subs


increase is unpalatable, the alternative is unacceptable. We need to be building the union not destroying it.


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