Chapel is fighting on

Today the chapel gave notice to management of our intention to continue the fight for fair pay - by staging more industrial action.

At a lively and well-attended meeting last night, members agreed to stage eight days of discontinous industrial action. We are planning to hold mandatory chapel meetings - of indeterminate length - at 8am every day from Thursday, June 12, to Thursday, June 19, inclusive.

The beauty of chapel meetings is that we can take action for as long or short a length of time as we like. We can simply return to work when we decide the meeting's business is over - effectively allowing us flexibility in whether to strike for five minutes, two hours, or days at a time.

While delivering the notice of our next action, we also reiterated that union officials remain willing to get back around the table should management be willing to reopen serious negotiations.

Of course, while our fight continues we hope the solidarity and messages of support from other trade unionists and journalists will also continue.

Please email messages of support to nujyork@gmail.com, sign our petition online at www.petitiononline.com/nujyork and lobby your MP to sign EDM 1639 by logging on to www.writetothem.com. If you have not already donated to our strike fund, please do so by sending cheques made out to NUJ Newsquest York Chapel to NUJ, 5th Floor, Arthur House, Chorlton Street, Manchester, M1 3FH. Thank you.

EDM signatures increasing

Our Early Day Motion (EDM) in Parliament is going from strength to strength, with six MPs now having signed up to the motion supporting our strike and urging Newsquest to enter into meaningful negotiations to tackle low pay and poor conditions.

Those to have backed EDM 1639 so far are: Labour MPs John McDonnell, Kelvin Hopkins, Paul Flynn, Lindsay Hoyle, Lynne Jones and Michael Clapham. If your MP is not on this list, please urge them to sign up by logging on to www.writetothem.com