Withdrawn motion gets point across
Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said yesterday that the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) would rethink the Training department’s funding in light of new proposals.
A motion brought forward to the union’s Annual Delegate Conference (ADM), suggested that the NEC should look into the profit-making possibilities of the training courses.
Although the motion had to be withdrawn due to an inaccuracy, Dear said the NEC would have backed it had it gone ahead.
He said: “Had the motion been in order we [the NEC] would have supported it. We would have investigated whether or not this was a possibility.
“NUJ training has a good reputation. It’s successful, and if we can make it more successful and available to more people then we’ll certainly look at it.”
Motion
Dear added: “Costs are a massive issue for us. Therefore we have to look at all the costs. But if this is something that could not be a cost but a benefit then we would not only keep it, we would expand it.”
The union was looking to cut one member of staff from the department as a cost saving measure.
Motion 132 instructed that the NEC should instead “investigate NUJ training operating as a profit centre, marketing its commercial course more aggressively and using its profits to continue providing cheap courses for members”.
The motion was withdrawn by the London Magazine branch over a mix-up about how the department’s salaries are funded. However, the principles of the motion will be taken on board.
Training
Last year the Training department ran 87 courses. 60 were in professional journalist training. The department also organises training for commercial companies and trade union training.
The Training department was also responsible for organising the students who have been reporting on ADM.
At the moment the union’s commercial training programmes are only advertised in The Journalist and on the NUJ website. One option would be to expand this marketing to bring in more commercial clients.
Over the last year commercial clients have included the Magazine company Informa, the Open University, Lexus Nexus and the Cabinet Office.
Linda King, the union’s Education and Training Officer, said: “We are getting more and more demand [for our courses] as members are losing jobs. In the current economic climate a way of retaining that membership is through retraining the individuals who have lost their jobs.”
We will watch the NEC’s progress with interest.
