YourSay... ç inviting letters, comments, tweets


Please keep comments to 200 words maximum


H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H


Too many bodies and too much talk in NUJ


Kevin Palmer asks if we can declutter the NUJ (October/ November). He questioned whether we need so many bodies within the union and whether branch responsibilities have to change. The NUJ’s democratic structure includes a general


secretary, a lay president, a vice president, an honorary treasurer and 29 executive members, four regional councils, five industrial councils, a photographers’ council, four equality councils, a health and safety committee, a professional training committee and The Journalist’s editorial advisory board. Too many bodies, yes, and also too many members


per council. This is compounded by our membership’s ability,


because words are our business, to articulate the hind leg off a donkey. Whether all this talk makes for good decision making is doubtful. Also, the time sent by staff serving the councils and the


financing of the meetings could be better used. The working demands of journalists, especially because


of online publishing, mean that branch meetings don’t or can’t draw a crowd, or sometimes even a quorum. Surely the answer is online union communication and a


system tailored for geographical or sector branches. This change of responsibilities would mean a change of branch officers’ duties. This all might rouse members every six months to an actual meeting. Roy Jones North Wales Coast branch


£30 prize


letter H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H


German model would have been better for our unions Thanks to Paul Routledge for a great piece on the TUC’s 150 years (150 not out, October/November). But his claim that the ‘English model was exported to Germany’ in 1945 is a myth. German workers looked with horror at the multiplicity of trade unions in every UK workplace – 14 different unions in a car plant or, when Paul and I started our careers, 10 unions in a newspaper.


22 | theJournalist


The German rule was one industry, one workplace, one union. Bargaining was done at a regional level with employer federations, never at company level. Workers in plants were represented by


fellow employees elected to works councils, not shop stewards or outside union officials. Worker representatives sat on company boards in a system introduced by the Christian Democrats in 1950.


There were only 14 trade unions in Germany compared to 70 in the TUC when I took out my NUJ card. The biggest was IG Metal, which had more than four million car, steel and metal industry workers. The legendary founding president of


IGMetal was Otto Brenner, who spent 13 years in Buchenwald under Hitler because of his opposition to fascist nationalism. At an international trade union conference Jack Jones, the


Email to: journalist@nuj.org.uk Post to: The Journalist 72 Acton Street, London WC1X 9NB Tweet to: @mschrisbuckley


equally legendary leader of the TGWU, enraged Brenner when he said the German system of having workers on boards was ‘collaboration with capital’. There is a self-serving myth that Britain and the TUC somehow shaped postwar German trade unions. It would have been far better if the Germans had come over and reorganised British unions along lines that served the working class. Denis MacShane London


Music journalism is very much alive and kicking I am afraid that Joely Carey (Bright allure of the ‘dark side’, October/ November) is indulging in a bit of negative PR when she claims ‘music journalism is dead’ and says there isn’t a ‘thriving music publication’. I suggest she reads the recent article in the Guardian by Dave Simpson, music journalist and lecturer at the University of Huddersfield, ‘What crisis? Why music journalism is actually healthier than ever’ (24 October). There are now more music publications than ever with some moving from online back to print with, yes, smaller circulations but they are actually now making a profit. There may be more jobs in PR, as my


former colleague Jenny Gibson notes in the article but, as I have always argued, it is still a ‘lie machine’. Dr Stephen Dorril Holmfirth


Is the code of conduct more than virtue signalling? Looking at the 12 bold principles on The Journalist’s back page, I found myself wondering what makes them constitute a ‘code of conduct’. Is that code ever enforced? Has the


NUJ ever disciplined a member for eg intruding into private grief or accepting inducements to do a story? If not, these principles amount to nothing more than virtue signalling and in a field where there is sometimes no virtue to signal. Paul Moss BBC Radio News


TIM ELLIS


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28