Freelances at the Financial Times chapel

AT THE JULY branch meeting we heard from Steve Bird the head of one of the two NUJ chapels at the Financial Times. He described the FT chapels as organised, recognised and “reasonably strong”.

He said that the FT chapels have experience representing freelances: “we work alongside freelances: they’re part of the FT, and it’s important that we remember, in our pay talks, which we have every year, to push for increased rates. Now, the sad thing is that there’s no legislation to compel that. In our house agreement there is no compulsion. It was about five years ago, we got our freelance rates pushed up by the same percentage as everyone else, which that year was 3%.

“We want to get a commitment to review freelance rates every year. There’s a business case for this: if they want to attract talent they need to pay competitive rates.

“That brings me on to the Rate For the Job that the Freelance produces online. It’s important: when we do get to the point where we’re discussing pay with our managers they will say, ‘can you give us figures; are we paying less than other people?’ It is useful to be able to show if, for example, the FT is paying less than the Guardian or the Telegraph.

“As we go into this brave new world of Ai rights, we have common cause with our employers at a time when Google is trying to eat everyone’s lunch. The FT’s rights are under siege as much as individual rights.

“The safeguards we want include ways to identify unique content in order to be able to protect it.