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6 December Right after the first two days on strike, the Guardian management confirmed its sale plan. Interestingly, this involves the Scott Trust acquiring a stake in Tortoise Media. The Guardian & Observer NUJ branch chapel issued a statement expressing outrage and continuing the strike on 12-13 December.
Solidarity with striking journalists - at the Guardian and Observer
JOURNALISTS in Guardian Media Group (GMG) will strike for four days on 4-5 December and 12-13 December over the company's plans to hive off the Observer to Tortoise Media. This follows 93 per cent of journalists at the titles voting in support of industrial action. We discussed the background to the dispute at the October Branch meeting.
Freelances are urged to support the strike in every way they can. Some of you may already have signed a contract committing you to do work on the strike day. And in the UK the law does not protect you as a freelance if you withdraw your labour despite that. But beyond that there is a lot they can do: they can be unavailable to work if offered shifts and they can refrain from pitching or supplying articles or images. There will be more advice from the NUJ national freelance office.
Any NUJ freelance who suffers a loss of income as a result of turning down shifts offered during a strike should contact the NUJ Chapel (workplace-based unit of NUJ organisation) for that media group.
NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said in response to the announcement of the vote on 20 November: “members have been left with no choice than to take action in their defence of the Observer’s heritage and public interest journalism. GMG has acted in poor faith, revealing hours into yesterday's negotiations that recommendation of the sale had already been agreed despite previous assurances to the contrary.”
Tim Gopsill, chair of London Freelance Branch, said: “These papers rely on a lot of high-class freelance material to maintain their crucial qualities that none of their competitors can match. Why should they be allowed to break up the workforce for this speculative project, a pipe-dream whose prospects of success no-one can even guess at?”
London Freelance Branch and the Freelance are working with the Freelance Office to clarify the situation of freelances on the title, particularly those of long standing.
Observer and Guardian resist Tortoise threat