Express and Star On Strike

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NUJ members at the Express and Star are on strike today (04/04) following refusal by the papers’ management to enter into meaningful negotiations on a fair pay deal for journalists.

Picket lines in London and Preston were manned from 6am this morning and over 100 messages of support have flooded in from journalists across the country. It is the first full-day strike by journalists on a major national newspaper in 18 years.

The strike at Express Newspapers follows a refusal by management to engage in meaningful negotiations with the NUJ on pay. The company is attempting to force a three per cent pay rise on journalists, despite having increased its printers’ pay by 4.3 per cent. NUJ members working on the company’s papers, the daily and Sunday titles of the Express and Star, say they are working under ever-greater pressures yet getting scant recognition for their efforts by management.

Union members on the picket lines are carrying placards with slogans designed to drive home their message, including: "3% is not OK!", referring to the celebrity magazine also owned by Express proprietor Richard Desmond, and "pay up RICHard".

NUJ President, Michelle Stanistreet, who is also a union rep at the Express was on the picket line first thing this morning, having flown back from the union’s annual conference in Belfast late on Thursday. She is due to return to the conference at lunchtime to deliver her presidential address, which is expected to highlight the extreme pressures and poor pay faced by journalists across the UK and Ireland.

I would call for a boycott in solidarity, but I doubt that many readers of this blog buy them in the first place. Do you?