Scarborough and Sheffield NUJ members at the company voted for strike action in protest against the way management has introduced Atex.

The votes came as NUJ chapels at Johnston Press are balloting for national action over Atex and the lack of serious negotiations over jobs,  increased workloads, and the creation of regional production hubs.

See stories on this site for more on the dispute

In Sheffield, the introduction of the system has seen reporters, feature writers and newsdesk staff grapple with producing most of the pages with practically no training, while page editors have watched their workload dwindle as they now handle only 20 per cent of pages.

In addition, the company is moving towards a centralised production hub based in Sheffield for North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. Fears that this may be widened to the whole of Yorkshire were strengthened when the company announced that the work of production journalists in  Scarborough was being moved to Sheffield – a journey of 100 miles which would take two hours by car.

Staff who don’t go can either redeploy to fill reporting vacancies (some of which are done by staff on short-term contracts or take severance.

The Sheffield Star is also moving to overnight printing from 26 March, which further hits news and sports coverage and means staff are being asked to voluntarily cover late shifts including Sunday nights. Talks with management are ongoing about this.

Sheffield MoC Julia Armstrong said: “Morale here has plummeted but anger has risen with each announcement, which leads us to believe our management in Edinburgh have lost the plot. All of this has caused our members an incredible amount of stress and worry, both for their jobs and for the state of the coverage we can offer our readers. Overnight printing means we may well not be able to report the result of the general election in the next day’s paper.

“We urge all other JP chapels who are facing similar attacks to ballot now as joint action is the only effective way forward. Our colleagues in Blackpool have already led the way with a magnificent vote.”

The ballot result should be due on 8 April.

To send messages of support to Sheffield, email saveourstar@hotmail.co.uk

A story that could be told about many magazines

Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, will lead the debate on the subject brought again into focus following the BBC’s decision to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time.

The NUJ Left conference will debate our response to the far right and our industrial tactics

Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, will also speak at the event in central London on Saturday 17 October, leading a session on media coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

The debates will be timely given Griffin is booked to appear just five days after we meet and StW is due to hold a national demonstration over Afghanistan the following Saturday.

The morning session of the conference will be devoted to a debate over industrial strategy and tactics, led by a panel of NUJ activists involved in recent disputes.

This will lead into a discussion on building NUJ Left through solidarity networks across workplaces and branches.

We will also be debating issues around the NUJ national executive council’s proposals about the frequency of delegates’ meetings.

NUJ Left convenor Alan Gibson said: “The NUJ faces massive challenges in which the left in the union can play an enormous role – but only if we not only gather our forces, but go all out to widen and strengthen them.”

The conference will be at St Aloysius social club, 20 Phoenix Road, London (five minutes from Euston Station), between 11am and 4.30pm.

For information email nuj.left@googlemail.com

Photo: Jonathan Warren

NUJ vice president Pete Murray says the Labour party has “lost its will to fight” and only united action from the unions and others can defend jobs and defeat the far right.

Speaking on behalf of the NUJ at the Jobs, Education, Peace rally in Brighton on Sunday, Pete contrasted the protesters out on the streets in the sunshine with those shut up inside the Labour party conference centre opposite.

To loud cheers, he said we were the ones making basic labour demands, with “an agenda for working class people”.

“There are some very simple and stark differences between us and them,” Pete added. “They are planning to cut jobs; we are talking about how to save them.

“They are talking about how to win the war in Afghanistan; we are saying stop the war. They are talking about debating with the BNP; we say destroy the BNP.”

He said the only war worth fighting is the war against poverty – and workers like those who took action at Visteon, Vestas and Prisme, and the student occupiers, have the ideas about how to win it.

“The NUJ is proud to be here joining those who are willing to fight, to challenge this whirlpool of despondency,” Pete said. “We’re the optimists - Labour has lost its will to fight.

“It spends more on buying bullets than building homes. More on bankers’ bonuses than unemployed workers. And it cares more about profit than justice.”

Pointing towards the conference centre, he added: “If they feel guilty being in there, they should come out here and find their hearts again and fight for a society based on peace not profit, need not greed.”

The rally was called by lecturers and teachers union UCU and organised with the the NUJ, NUT, PCS, RMT, the CWU, and the anti-war movement.

UCU Tower Hamlets college branch secretary Richard McEwan thanked fellow trade unionists for the support and solidarity they received during their four-week strike, which had ended in victory just days before. He said they had raised more than £20,000 for their hardship fund.

Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell both spoke out against the current government’s policies, including plans to slash public spending.

John said: “The lesson from Vestas, Visteon and Tower Hamlets is that we can win if we fight back.”

More than 100 trade unionists packed into the London Welsh Centre on Thursday night to hear the NUJ’s general secretary Jeremy Dear and a host of leading union activists call for a powerful protest in Brighton next weekend at Labour party conference.

Fresh from the TUC in Liverpool, Jeremy spoke about the government’s lack of political will – unemployment can be beaten, but it means a change of priorities from the banks to working people, he said.

Mark Flower from the Vestas occupation got a standing ovation before he even spoke. He went on to describe how he and 16 other workers had thrust climate change to the top of the agenda in the union movement, in the face of lies from his bosses, police aggression and government inaction.

Sasha Callaghan of the UCU said now was not the time to stay silent and not “rock the boat” as the election approached – we had to shout now for an alternative. Kevin Courtney from the NUT executive picked up this theme and made a passionate speech for unions to co-ordinate immediate action for jobs.

Lyndsey German for the Stop the War Coalition made the connection between the current crisis and the billions wasted on criminal wars and the Trident nuclear weapons system. The hall applauded the TUC’s historic decision to call for a boycott of Israeli goods.

LSE student Estelle Cooch from Right to Work talked about how her economics lecturers apologise to students every day that what they are about to learn is being proved totally wrong by the recession.

Finally Richard McEwan of the UCU at Tower Hamlets college brought the hall to its feet in solidarity with the all-out strike of teachers there, which is now into its fourth week.

I came away with leaflets, posters, stickers, papers and other material to distribute at work. As well as tickets for Brighton. Please email me on david.crouch10@btinternet.com if you need any.

Surviving NUJ members at the Express titles are currently going through yet another redundancy exercise.

Richard Desmond’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for journalistic blood demands the sacrifice of a further 96 London jobs from a total of 600 across the Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Express, Daily Star Sunday and their associated magazines.

The Glasgow office is to lose a quarter of its staff – that is 10 from just 40 serving four national titles.

Initial proposals, full of words like “eliminate” and “review”, indicate that no one is safe. Merging desks between titles and copy-sharing are strong possibilities.

A nine-day fortnight is to be brought in to replace the current four-day week. These are of course four-night weeks as these 10-hour shifts go on until the early hours of the following day.

District reporters look set to be consigned to the history books, replaced by agency copy. Management here have recently been successful in engaging outside suppliers of words and pictures in talks about renewed contracts – where they have agreed to cut their prices by as much as 16%.

The 1 January pay review for this year was postponed until 1 June. Then it was postponed completely. On the day we were due to commence pay negotiations for 2010, the company announced its latest cull.

Daily Express Editor Peter Hill told me in an email: “No one wants to see job cuts but survival is the issue now. Revenues from circulation and advertising are drastically down and there is no prospect of any improvement. The bills have to be paid. The company has to be viable.”

No mention there about the journalistic reputation and credibility of the titles having to survive. No thought of restoring the Daily Express to its former glories.

What has happened to Desmond’s plan to overtake the journalistic juggernaut that is the Daily Mail? He is not going to overtake anyone while he reduces the Daily Express to a title whose staff could easily fit inside a Smart car.

The NUJ chapel has warned management before that it views these constant cuts with anger. We believe they herald the demise of the Daily Express and Sunday Express as national titles. But still the redundancy exercises come – and they are getting closer together.

Redundancy exercises have become as regular as Daily Express splashes on the McCanns, or Jordan and Peter Andre front pages in the Daily Star.

When Desmond bought the Express titles in 2001 I think he thought he was buying Express Dairies as he has been milking us ever since. He has paid himself millions in both salary and pension and then says the company is fighting for survival. I wonder why.

You are demanding a new direction tonight. NUJ members at the Express and Daily Star are desperate for management to take a new direction too – away from badly-managed decline and towards meaningful investment in quality journalism and quality titles.

See you in Brighton.

Reporters know that in working for the Mail you hand over a little piece of your soul when you file your copy.

The deal acknowledges that any vaguely sentient newsgatherer knows it is odd, at best, to ignore the otherwise newsworthy ambitions and achievements of whole sections of society.

As Nick Davies discusses in Flat Earth News, the editorial line has a corrosive effect on the kind of journalism its journalists practise. But you take your poison, or you move on.

The same can not be said for the Guardian. Like the BBC, the desire to work there for many is cultural and political, as well as journalistic.

In recent years, however, GMG management has been chipping away at the group’s founding public service ethos that is not just important to journalists on the left, but also a vital part of a diverse and free press.

Journalists and readers in Manchester, for example, rightly wonder how “a sense of duty to the reader and the community” is best served by closing local offices and cutting jobs, while handing out massive executive bonuses.

It is also difficult to see how anyone could seriously contemplate closing down the country’s oldest Sunday newspaper or turning it into an irrelevant mid-week magazine.

The possibility that this is a softening-up exercise to push through further cuts in London is as disgraceful as it is worrying for the future of the Guardian and the Observer.

Amid all this controversy, management is busy attacking the creative rights of photographers by saying it will no longer pay to re-use images.

As photojournalist and NUJ Left member Jonathan Warren says on his blog – in a post linking the issue to the Guardian’s appeal for free Flickr images of the London Climate Camp – “photographers rely on reuse fees to earn a living”.

The timing of ‘Flickr-gate’ could not be better. Or worse. Photographers will be protesting against the rights grab outside the Guardian offices in York Way, London, at 9.30am on Tuesday 1 September.

Some freelance photographers have already said they will boycott the Guardian until it negotiates a new deal.

And if the bosses don’t get back to their roots with some “honesty, integrity and fairness” soon, other journalists and readers could well follow suit.

It is highly unlikely the Mail will benefit from this. But the Guardian, as a newspaper and a group, will certainly suffer.

Activists met this evening to begin planning the NUJ’s involvement in what we hope will be a massive showing of union solidarity at the Labour party conference on 27 September.

So far four unions – NUJ, NUT, UCU and PCS – have come together nationally with the mass anti-war movement to organise a joint protest at the conference in Brighton.

To help build support for the event we hope to hold a Stand up for Journalism public meeting in London in mid-September. Further details will be published when available.

We need to ensure as many members as possible are involved in building for the protest and chapels and branches will be asked to discuss what they can do, and what support they can offer.

While we are working towards a big turnout at the protest, more importantly the event provides a focus to help us co-ordinate our fightback against the cuts in all sectors of our industry and the attacks on quality journalism and press freedom.

Recent militant actions across the country – including at Visteon, Lindsey and, more recently, Vestas on the Isle of Wight and Thomas Cook in Dublin – show what can be achieved when workers take the initiative.

Like everyone, NUJ members will be watching these disputes and it is our task as activists to use these opportunities to talk about how we can fight the employers who are using the recession as an excuse to execute devastating cuts.

We are keen to learn lessons from those who have taken part in occupations and other forms of action, and hope to build more of these links as this campaign progresses.

We need a united strategy, not just within the NUJ but beyond, drawing in other unions, campaigners and supporters.

We are living through the worst economic crisis for 60 years. No one has any idea how it will pan out or when it will end.

Unemployment is soaring. Yet where are the unions? We should be battering on the doors of parliament.

Like never before we need strong unions that can connect individual, isolated struggles into a powerful national movement.

Millions understand that it is a crime to throw billions at propping up the banks. The G20 protesters at the Bank of England had the right idea – the unions have the muscle to deliver their vision.

This week Vestas has been humbled on the Isle of Wight by an occupation backed by hundreds of trade unionists and climate activists. Unofficial action has recently won stunning victories at Lindsey and Visteon.

These developments have the potential to transform the political situation in this country.

For this reason four unions – NUJ, NUT, UCU and PCS – have come together nationally with the mass anti-war movement to call a joint protest at Labour’s conference in Brighton on 27 September.

The government is weak and desperate to save its skin. A large and radical protest in Brighton can pile the pressure on Labour to change track. The day before the protest the Convention of the Left will rally left activists and continue the urgent work of building unity.

Last Friday representatives of all four unions met at the UCU to hammer out some details. But the initiative from Headland House won’t build a demo on its own – it needs to be backed up with grassroots activism.

Time is short, so there will be a first stab at creating an NUJ organising committee from 7pm on Tuesday 4 August at NUJ headquarters, 308-312 Gray’s Inn Road, London. Nearest station is King’s Cross.