Bristol NUJ

Membership

The Branch has 416 members including 34 student members. We have strong membership at the Bristol Evening Post and Western Daily Press newspapers based in Bristol and at BBC Bristol, as well as members in almost all media organisations in the city.

Organisation We have four Chapels: Bristol Evening Post/Western Daily Press, ITV West, the BBC and BBC Worldwide. There are an estimated 90 freelances within the Branch. The Branch covers all the members in our Chapels as well as all other freelance and staff members registered with Bristol Branch. Members are also registered to the NUJ Industrial Sector in which they work as staff, or to the Freelance Sector if they are Freelance. A member can therefore get advice and support from their respective National Organiser as well as help from the Branch or their Chapel.

Officers The Branch exec comprises: Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Welfare Officer, Equality/Students Officer, Freelance Officer, Exiled Journalists’ Network Officer and the new post of Technical Officer.

This year’s officers have been: Christina Zaba, Tony Gosling, Simon Chapman, Mike Jempson, Julia Guest, Sarah Rice, Julian Monaghan, and Forward Maisokwadzo.

It should be noted that none of the officers are paid. They claim occasional travel expenses from the Branch, agreed at meetings, and they can also claim travel and accommodation expenses and a loss of earnings allowance of £50/day from the NUJ central organisation if travelling to London or elsewhere in the country to attend a meeting.

From Bristol Branch we have also had members sitting on the following national NUJ councils: New Media Industrial Council, Disabled Members’ Council, Freelance Industrial Council, Profcom, Ethics Council. Activities We’ve had a busy year, with action in different areas.

We have met our aim of supporting members in the first instance, and Branch officers have spent much time on individual cases, in some cases also generating local publicity to good effect. We have also supported Chapels, notably the Bristol Evening Post/Western Daily Press chapels, in their ongoing struggle for recognition and fair, professional and reasonable dealing.

The Branch has supported striking colleagues throughout the country and we have put our weight behind NUJ campaigns including Journalism Matters. We have also built and sustained links with neighbouring NUJ Chapels, with our NUJ reps in various parts of the Union. We support the Bristol-based Exiled Journalists’ Network and their Press Freedom House.

We’ve worked within the wider Trade Union movement locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, lending our support to wider campaigns and taking our place within the day-to-day work of running trade union organisations. We have representatives on the Bristol Trades Union Council and the South West TUC Regional Council.

We have conveyed information regularly about jobs, training opportunities and where to go to for advice to our members and we have conducted ongoing work to support local photographers. We have given opportunities to journalism students and their teachers and we have encouraged and supported freelances.

We’ve also made progress on raising the profile of the NUJ in the city by holding two major events, hosting a regional Journalism Matters event and the inaugural Benn Lecture, as well as liaising and building links with MPs, councillors, Bristol City Council, media organisations, the Universities and other professional associations.

We’ve ensured local support for national NUJ policies and campaigns, some of which we have spearheaded ourselves, or continued to draw attention to, including the Freedom of Information Act and the NO2ID campaign. We have borne this out by writing to the trade press and the Journalist, taking an active part in NUJ democracy, writing, presenting and voting on motions to ADM and representing the NUJ in other campaigns.

We’ve streamlined our internal admin structures, and endeavour to increase recruitment  – a national NUJ aim.

We’ve built a solid and committed executive and defined and carried out roles and responsibilities. We have worked hard at building links with Chapels and creating ongoing friendship, support and trust to help all members access the wider support networks and structures of the NUJ.

Month by month In the past 12 months we have held 7 Branch meetings, 7 Executive meetings, 2 Freelance meetings, and Chapel meetings at BEPP.  We sent Branch representatives to NUJ, SWTUC and TUC conferences as speakers and delegates and presented and carried 6 motions to ADM.

We have remained involved with the struggle at the joint BEPP Chapels, attending most Chapel meetings, offering support as necessary to the group and to individual members, and in particular giving a public voice to the Chapel by organising September’s Journalism Matters launch meeting. We have also worked very hard and consistently on getting a better deal for photographers at the papers, which we hope will soon be concluded. This has been a first for any Branch in the union in similar circumstances.

We have also supported the new NUJ Chapel at BBC Worldwide and have met and spoken with Chapel officers from ITV West and BBC Whiteladies Road. Branch officers attended ongoing NUJ meetings at a national level as required, some 15 London meetings in total.

2006

May The Branch sent a representative as part of the NUJ’s delegation to the TUC Disability conference in London, who spoke to motions on behalf of our members in a national Trade Union forum.

June As part of Bristol Branch’s special interest in privacy and civil liberty issues as they relate to journalists, the Branch invited Dave Gould, Bristol Chair of the NO2ID campaign, to speak to members about what the ID cards system could mean to them. We also wrote for the Journalist, Media Workers Against the War, The Guardian and the Freelance on the issue and carried a motion at ADM 2006 to ballot the members on affiliating to NO2ID. The ballot was carried out later in the year and the union voted by an ‘overwhelming’ majority to affiliate, making it the first trade union in the TUC to do so. As a consequence of this, the NUJ is now working with NO2ID to engage all 6.5 million trade union members in the UK in the fight against surveillance creep, and Bristol Branch are actively engaged in liaising between the two organisations. A Branch motion at ADM 2007 affirming this position was carried.

July We hosted Sergei Guz, Chair of the Independent Media Trade Unions of the Ukraine, in his visit to Bristol, and pledged to build further links with the nascent journalists’ union in the Ukraine as part of our commitment to ethical journalism worldwide and our consciousness of global media reach, in line with the NUJ’s affiliation to the IFJ (International Federation of Journalists).

August The Branch arranged and worked with journalism students and their tutors from UWE to create a 10-minute film about the state of the regional media in Bristol to show at our Journalism Matters event (next).

September We arranged, publicised and conducted our JOURNALISM MATTERS  meeting chaired by Kerry McCarthy MP. Speakers included Jeremy Dear, NUJ General Secretary, Chris Morley, NUJ President, David Drew MP, and local NUJ officers and members as well as many trade unionists and campaigners from the floor, and local councillors. The meeting, held at the Watershed, aired the desperate problems faced by the local media and local democracy and it generated understanding and goodwill for the profession and the NUJ. It was the biggest Journalism Matters meeting of any Branch in the UK. We also hosted a meeting of the NUJ’s PR Industrial Council, attended by more local PRs than the Council have encountered in any other regional centre. From that meeting we made links between the NUJ and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the South-West, initiating a base from which to recruit to the NUJ from the local PR sector.

October The Branch supported the Southampton strike at the Daily Echo with text messages. A new Chapel was set up in the Branch, at BBC Worldwide. We held a meeting for freelances, addressed by 9/11 survivor and world-famous janitor in the Twin Towers on that day, now an activist for surivivors’ groups William Rodriguez. We wrote and submitted 6 motions to ADM. Our Branch Treasurer was appointed Visiting Professor in Media Ethics at Lincoln University and we all started calling him Prof Jempson. A Branch officer attended the South East Wales and Cardiff Branch annual Press Ball, building links with our Welsh colleagues, which was a very onerous duty…

November Bristol Branch NUJ sold out the Arnolfini! We arranged, hosted and chaired the first annual Benn Media Lecture, in partnership with the Arnolfini, addressed by Tony Benn (ex-Bristol MP and honorary member of the NUJ) and Alan Hart (former ITN and Panorama Middle East correspondent), on ‘The Media and the Political Process’. The evening was a resounding success with a wide cross-section of the city’s community in the audience. Two Branch officers went to the NUJ’s Pay in the Media Summit in Cardiff, and spoke there on behalf of the Freelance sector.

December We sent two representatives to the NUJ annual Women’s Conference, ‘Past Times: Future Challenges’. We also arranged the Branch Christmas social drinks at Hausbar in Clifton, and an officer went to the NUJ Cardiff and South-East Wales Branch Christmas social in Cardiff.

2007

January Cardiff-based Kate Carr, NUJ rep for the BBC throughout the UK, came to the Branch meeting to discuss the position of the NUJ in the BBC and ways forward. She pledged to make a return visit. We agreed to make 2007 a year for building closer links with Cardiff NUJ: ‘Hands across the Severn in 2007’.

February The Branch sent two people to the first-ever NUJ  Photographers’ Conference and we re-joined the Bristol Trades Council. The new Branch website went live after much discussion about protocol, privacy and ethics.

March Bristol NUJ was invited by Bristol City Council to take part in judging the city-wide Community Newsletters Award, giving us the chance to address the people of Bristol about good journalism and the NUJ, and putting us on the same platform as BEPP management, who reported the event too. We also spoke about Journalism Matters and gathered more support for the campaign, and about the NUJ’s support of the NO2ID campaign, at the Fighting Trade Unions event at the Council House, sharing a platform with Tony Benn and trade union leaders. Dialect Radio broadcast the speech online.

April By sharing delegates’ rights, sending an observer and representing other parts of the NUJ, Bristol contrived to have a total of 7 people at ADM. All our motions were passed and one of us was elected to represent the NUJ as part of the TUC Women’s Delegation. A report about ADM has been written separately. We also sent a representative to the South-West TUC Annual Conference. The Branch Equality Officer attended an Equality officers’ course given by the NUJ in London.

As Branch Chair it’s a real pleasure to be able to thank the members and Chapel officers right across the Branch for their support in many ways.

Special thanks to Pete Ferne for giving his time and expertise to set up the Branch website, and to Nick Flaherty for his help. Thanks also to Tim Lezard, our representative to the NUJ’s National Executive Council, for solid support, sympathy, good judgement and good advice; and to John Toner, National NUJ freelance officer, for his time, visits and expertise.

In addition I’d like to thank members of the Executive for their generous hard work, their commitment to the NUJ and to all our members, and for the enquiring, professional and supportive spirit which makes working in the Branch so rewarding.