By Aidan White

The idea of creating one big union is hardly new. From the earliest days unionised workers have always yearned for industrial power, and what better way to deliver it than in building a single, powerful union? The ethos of unionism has always been unity and solidarity.

But this form of solidarity has always had a political edge – most romantically captured in the fervour of “The Wobblies” (Industrial Workers of the World) who dreamed of global revolution through union power. The reality of union organisation has been more practical. As workers organised themselves they stuck close to those workers who do the same tasks, work in the same industry, and share the same traditions of skill and training.

They found that organising in specific groups – teachers, plumbers, nurses, engineers, building workers, farm labourers, and journalists – brings more effective solidarity than simply trying to create mass organisations comprising numerous different interests and over which numerically small sections have little control.

This is as true today as it was when the IFJ launched itself as the global voice of journalists in 1926.

Olivier Da Lage or others who worry that professional unity may be at risk as we think about new ways to organise workers across the new information landscape should rest assured – the IFJ, its name and its role in defending journalism and democratic rights, is not up for negotiation.

While it’s true that in many countries there have been big union mergers in the face of declining membership and globalisation that has shifted work from many western countries to emerging economies, mainly in Asia. But these mergers never work when they snuff out the identity and traditions of workers engaged in specific tasks.

That will not happen in journalism. Even where journalists’ groups have merged into larger bodies, the identity of journalists remains distinct and intact.

That notion of identity is critical when we look at the dramatic changes in the information landscape. Many people now do work that is clearly journalistic, but because they come into the job untouched by the customs and traditions of the old media industry, they don’t think of themselves as journalists. The word “journalist” doesn’t appear anywhere in their job descriptions.

Thousands of workers in the telecommunications, information technology, computer and web-based economies are drifting into journalistic work. They prepare content, design websites, develop new ways to publish and deliver audio, video and text. In a sense they are the architects of the future of journalism, they are a new skilled and labouring class that are also massively exploited without unions to protect them.

The big question posed by the IFJ future of journalism group and to be debated at our coming Congress is how we strengthen the identity of journalistic work and find ways to make sure that the new generation of workers of the Internet age recognise that what they do is journalism and that they need a journalists’ union.

How do we do that? Most IFJ unions, whose power came from organising print and broadcasting workers in the traditional media’s information factories, have no experience of organising in the sectors where these workers place themselves. Many of them work in small units, often a handful of people in each workplace.

There are unions already covering these sectors – post and telecommunications, informatics and services – but very often they do not organise the workers we are targeting.

If we are to develop strategies for organising, it makes sense to build partnerships with these unions. This is already being done in some countries. Such partnerships are valuable if they are based upon two guiding principles – that all workers need to be organised, and that journalists need to be organised by journalists’ unions.

Olivier is right to say that we have yet to take the measure of the impact of change on journalism. That’s a major task – to survey the changing landscape, to identify where new jobs are being created, and to see where journalistic work is being done.

We could do this on our own, but it makes far more sense to do it in partnership with unions already organising in the sectors. Such co-operation is not an agreement to merge, but it opens the door to establishing useful and co-operative alliances. How these alliances develop is entirely in our hands.

We cannot predict the future, but if we want unions and workers rights to be properly protected in the years to come we need to follow the evolution of work in journalism.

Our message is clear: only journalists' unions can properly defend journalists’ rights, and the IFJ is the global heartbeat of the profession. Working together, respecting our differences, and finding new ways to build solidarity might just provide one positive strategy in the difficult years ahead.     

The severe crisis medias worldwide are currently going through is hitting hard journalists and we are yet to take the measure of its full extent.

This crisis is all the more severe that it is not just an economic or a financial crisis. It is also and foremost a confidence crisis whereby the public at large does no longer feel represented by the media. As a result, journalists who used to consider themselves as the vanguard of the citizens now have to win day after day the public’s trust and hence their legitimacy.

A crisis is not necessary all that bad for unions and unionists. A small degree of crisis can provide the unions for an increased mobilisation of workers and strengthen support by workers who rally behind unionists to pressure employers into giving in to their demands.

However, when a crisis is as deep as the one we are experiencing theses days, it is altogether a very different game. While newspapers are closing, or at the very least, downsizing their staff, journalists and non-journalists alike are left with one single priority: save their individual job. To persuade them that the best way to achieve this aim is to join the union is by no means an easy sell. Not surprisingly, many amongst our unions are losing members and therefore financial resources, which puts their very existence at risk.

As I said earlier, there is no discrimination in this crisis: all media workers are feeling the blow, whether they are journalists or not. To confront this twin crisis (media and unions), the response appears to be obvious: let’s put aside our specificity as journalists and unite with other media workers in one single media and entertainment union in order to gain strength. Some of the IFJ members have already taken this path and others are in the process of following suit, as it seems the most sensible and logical solution.

Or is it?

I beg to differ.

There is no doubt that journalists need to confront this crisis shoulder to shoulder with other media workers. There is no room there for petty quarrels between unions. But to merge the journalists’ unions into a wider media union is not necessary the answer. There is a very serious risk of diluting our specific demands, especially with regard to ethics. While being fully aware that my position is going to come as controversial and shocking to many, let me make my point, based on the experience of my union, SNJ (Syndicat national des journalistes) founded in 1918 as a journalists only union, and which is affiliated to no confederation. Moreover, SNJ does not employ one single union activist: all members, from the rank and file to the general secretary, are full time working journalists (or, sadly for some, temporarily jobless journalists). It does raise organisational problems. But the truth is that it brought about an efficiency that we would not attain otherwise: short of time, short of money, our members and leadership are left with no alternative: every effort has to pay off.

Thus, efficiency is not an aim: it is a necessity. Our leaders know the cost of being a unionist while working for an employer. Some have been sacked; many have been sidelined and marginalised by their editors and publishers. None has ever experience the gap that tends to exist after a while between the ordinary member and the leaders, because they share a common experience, with just additional trust. And last, but not least, it is a tremendous bonus in term of credibility, both vis-à-vis the employers and the government while negotiating with them, since our delegates know what they are talking about, not because they have been told by colleagues, not from past experience, but because they live it. And ethics and accountability towards the public is at the core of our preoccupations ever since SNJ published its ethical code in 1918, which is still the reference for French professional journalists.

As mentioned above, SNJ is a journalists only union, which does not belong to a confederation. But we value the need for coalition with other workers, NGO and consumers associations. We are very active in these coalitions and respected for what we are: fully legitimate in representing journalists, we respect them for what each of these organisations represents. The condition for a working coalition is that several organisations unite with a common aim that has been agreed upon. It is not the merger of all these organisations, which can and must, each of them, pursue separate goals on other issues.

The alternative to a working coalition is not just merger, it is dilution.

Olivier Da Lage
Member of the IFJ Executive Committee

Avec près de 15 % de taux de syndicalisation (dont plus de la moitié pour le seul SNJ), les journalistes français sont bien au-dessus de la moyenne nationale, ce qui n’est pas si mal, pour une profession souvent considérée comme peuplée d’individualistes. Mais comparé aux quelque 90 % de syndiqués chez les journalistes nordiques, on se sent tout petit.

Les grands discours sur la nécessité de syndicats puissants tenus par les pouvoirs publics ou par les éditeurs « qui ont besoin de partenaires » sonnent creux, surtout à la lumière de ce qui vient de se passer pendant l’été : la loi mettant en musique la « position commune » CGT-CFDT-MEDEF a bien failli déclarer le SNJ hors-la-loi, ou peu s’en faut. Et si cela a été évité de justesse, cela n’a été possible que par une intense mobilisation estivale, dans l’indifférence des éditeurs et d’une bonne partie de la classe politique.

Si une leçon doit en être tirée, c’est que les journalistes ne peuvent compter que sur eux-mêmes pour se défendre, à condition de s’appuyer sur le public, seul fondement de leur légitimité. À méditer alors que certains (les ouvriers du livre de la FTILAC) préparent une OPA sur notre profession et que d’autres (la direction de Solidaires) entendent nous fondre dans l’interprofessionnel. Sans rompre ni avec les uns, ni avec les autres, nous devons être clairs sur ce que nous sommes et ce que nous voulons, car nul ne le fera à notre place.

Or, ce que nous voulons, c’est défendre une information de qualité, celle-là même que demande le citoyen en ces temps troublés, celle qui coûte cher en moyens humains, en rigueur, en frais de reportage, mais qui est la seule garantie de la pérennité de la mission d’information que la société attend des médias. Car s’il s’agit de recopier la dépêche du voisin, de restituer la vie d’une société que le journaliste ne connaît plus qu’à travers son écran d’ordinateur, le public aura tôt fait d’aller voir ailleurs, là où l’on innove et où l’on reste fidèle à cette mission d’informer. Le problème, c’est que de plus en plus, sur la blogosphère, des non-journalistes s’emparent de cette mission, souvent de façon imparfaite, mais parfois de manière remarquable et très professionnelle.

S’ils remportent un succès, ils le doivent à leur talent, mais tout autant parce que les médias traditionnels, désormais souvent dirigés par des juristes, financiers, industriels et non par des patrons de presse, l’œil rivé sur une rentabilité immédiate, leur ont abandonné le terrain, sacrifiant au passage une rentabilité à plus long terme. Dans les projets de ces génies de la finance qui sabordent les médias qu’ils dirigent, il n’y a plus de journalistes, mais des producteurs de contenu. Par conséquent, tous ces « insupportables privilèges » que le Code du travail et la convention collective reconnaissent aux journalistes (clause de conscience, commission arbitrale, droits d’auteur…) n’auraient plus de raison d’être, et le SNJ, syndicat qui leur est dédié, pas davantage.

Au fond, rien de neuf sous le soleil. Dans l’entre-deux guerres, le directeur du Matin, Maurice Bunau-Varilla, avait coutume de dire que dans son journal, il n’y avait pas de journalistes, seulement des employés. C’est en réponse à cette attitude arrogante que, fidèle aux buts qu’il s’était fixés à sa création en 1918, le SNJ avait inspiré en 1935 le statut des journalistes qui nous régit aujourd’hui encore. Et c’est pourquoi, fidèle à ce qu’il est resté, le SNJ doit aujourd’hui relever les nouveaux défis sans oublier d’où il vient. Sinon, le dernier journaliste pourra fermer la lumière : le public sera parti avant lui.

Olivier Da Lage

Bad news from the frontline of global capitalism.

Every year the Davos World Economic Forum puts the corporate world on the psychiatrist's couch where business leaders fuss about why they remain unloved in a cruel world. One of the reasons as I found out last week may be their diminishing sense of values, particularly in media.

I took part in a future of journalism session at Davos where I raised concerns over the new businesss model of Fox News -- biased, provocative and loud-mouthed journalism.

Fox is the money-spinning flagship of Rupert Murdoch's global empire and a survey last week showed that more than 50 per cent of people polled in the US found Fox their most trusted media, compared with 39 per cent for CNN, down in 22nd position.

Fox is a brilliant commercial success, but it makes money at the expense of ethical reporting. It is openly partisan and has developed its appeal on being the media attack-dog for Republican politics. It has no regard for objective reporting. Far from it. It has led the backlash against liberal politics and particularly those of Barack Obama. The Fox model thrives on bias and populism and is making a pile of money, but in the process it is shredding the fabric of ethical journalism.

Pointing out this challenge to traditional values in media to a Davos audience produced an uncomfortable silence and then, shockingly, a couple of contributions that suggested perhaps the days of ethical and balanced journalism were over. As someone said, much of the world's media is  heavily biased one way or another, so why not just accept it and move on.

Can they be serious? If so, the thousands of people fighting for press freedom in distant and dangerous corners of the world who are committed to democratic principles are in danger of being cut adrift. It's more important than ever for us to assert that journalism is a public good that must not be sacrificed by bean-counting managers. 

The world of journalism is moving into a new decade of transformation, expansion and opportunity. To make the most of this new situation all journalists’ unions – and the IFJ itself – must embrace a new and inclusive process of union-building in which we can take the offensive in our battles with media employers and governments.

We have to provide leadership in the drive to develop the future of media and communications in the context of quality, high ethical standards, public service values and meaningful diversity. All of this will reinforce free speech, freedom of information and media freedom.

But we can only become a vanguard organisation by improving our organising tools. More than half a million journalists are members of the affiliates of IFJ, but we should be much larger and much more representative of the expanding world of information and work. Our unions, for example, should represent at least two million colleagues. We need to recruit in all areas of the new media landscape in order to strengthen our impact.

Our first and most important tool is to exchange our exclusive way of organising into an inclusive organising strategy. That does not mean we diminish or devalue our identity as, first and foremost, the world’s premier organisation for journalists. But we do need to recognise that journalists and the people they work with have common interests, common goals and are interdependent as workers.

To develop our new strategies we need friends and cooperation inside the trade union family. We need to nourish and cherish the differences in the ways that national unions are developing different cultural ways of developing their unions.

In some countries we will see closer cooperation between different trade unions while we in others we can expect merging of unions and associations covering everybody, who works with content in all media and communication. There is no single model that that we need to adopt.

But what we must do is support the fundamental principle that all media workers and communication staff should be organised into trade unions. Furthermore we should take action to extend our scope for recruitment into all areas of media and communication from which employees and freelancers will seek membership. All of this will strengthen journalism, the IFJ and the global union movement.

During the coming three year congress period should help each other to strengthen our affiliates in their trade union work. We must encourage innovation, and be more open to new groups of workers. This will show immediate results.

But the first step is to change our mind-set. We need to stop thinking of journalists as a professional elite. We need to recognise that while we can and must protect and strengthen the work that journalists do, we can also extend our reach to include everyone working with information content without any reservations.

As we forge ahead let us build bridges with other groups of workers, let us strengthen the co-operation and information sharing between IFJ unions, let us look for new forms of co-operation with other international trade union groups and let us focus on what counts – union solidarity and building democracy through journalism as a public good and in which everyone, at work and in society at large, has a vested interest.  

By Mogens Blicher Bjerregård

President of the Danish Union of Journalists (DJ)

Member of the IFJ Executive Committee and Honorary Treasurer