‘You couldn’t write it!’
The anti-trade union right-wing newspaper the Daily Express has been the source of ridicule this week after it emerged its reporters voted to take industrial action over low pay.
The paper’s reporters joined other journalists who work for Reach, the UK’s largest newspaper group and one of the biggest employers of journalists in the UK, in voting to strike. Reach owns and publishes hundreds of national, regional, and local titles, including the Daily Star, Daily and Sunday Mirror, and Daily Express.
Regardless of the political slant of the newspapers and their journalists, members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) asserted solidarity and voted to strike over a ‘meagre’ 3% pay rise offer.
The NUJ rejected the pay increase offer saying it was not enough given the rising cost of living and inflation. In a 70% turnout of members, 88% of NUJ members voted for industrial action.
The strike action was due to start on August 26. However, following a long discussion, the NUJ agreed to suspend the first day of planned action to allow for further talks. According to a source in the Guardian, it is now down to bosses to make a substantial pay offer if they want to avoid strikes scheduled for next week. Pending the outcome of the negotiations, a strike planned for August 31 is set to go ahead.
The starting salary for a journalist at Reach is around £22,000 a year. This is significantly below the median average UK salary for positions which typically require extensive experience and training. Meanwhile, in 2021 Reach’s chief executive Jim Mullen pocketed a £4m pay package.
A ‘powerful message’
Chris Morley, NUJ Reach national coordinator described the vote as a “powerful message”, saying: “With this result, our members are clearly saying that the company – which gave its top two executives pay packages worth more than £7m – can, and must, do much better than a meagre 3%/£750 minimum increase on already inadequate pay.
“We very much hope that the company has the good grace and humility to recognise it made a mistake in making this poor offer against the backdrop of this cost-of-living turmoil. And rather than trigger the planned damaging walkouts by doing nothing, senior management are urged to now come forward with meaningful proposals to resolve the dispute,” Morley added.
News that journalists from the Express – well known for its smears at the trade union movement – voted to join picket line over pay, incited plenty of ridicule.
A ‘satirist’s dream’
A ‘satirist’s dream’ read the headline of the London Economic, in reference to a comment made by one journalist who acknowledged the irony of the right-wing tabloid being caught up in a dispute over the pay of staff.
Others took to social media to share mockery.
“Excuse me while I laugh my head off at the news that journalists at the strike hating Daily Express are about to go on strike,” someone tweeted, with another posting, “you couldn’t write it.”
By constantly striving to undermine the trade union movement and rile its readership, the Express is one of the country’s leading voices when it comes to smearing unions.
In July, the paper branded RMT boss Mick Lynch a “Marxist dinosaur” and the “worse kind of champagne socialist.”
In an earlier attack on Lynch, in 2017 the Express described the union boss as a ‘hypocrite’ for riding to work on a train after he warned they were dangerous for public use.
Ahead of last weekend’s train strikes, the right-wing tabloid relished in repeating transport secretary Grant Shapps’ claims that ‘Luddite trade unions’ are ‘holding the country to ransom.’
The same day the Guardian reported that staff from the newspaper that rails against ‘militant trade unions’, were to join the strike action, the Express ran a headline reading ‘Enough is enough! Train strikes to end within 30 days of PM Truss.’
The article speaks of how the Tory leadership frontrunner has insisted “enough is enough”, as she promised “new laws to prevent rail strikes bringing the nation to a standstill.” The Express took delight in informing readers on how Truss vows to introduce such legislation within 30 days of entering Number 10.
Somewhat predictably, the union-busting newspaper has failed to report on its own journalists voting to take to the picket line over a ‘meagre’ pay rise offer.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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