Coventry telegraph strike / work to rule
Oct 23 2007 15:16
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=39211&c=1
Quote:
NUJ members at the Coventry Telegraph are adopting work-to-rule conditions and could hold an all-day walkout in an escalating industrial dispute over staffing levels.Journalists at the Telegraph are aggrieved that staff numbers have dwindled in recent years after journalists’ jobs were lost through redundancy schemes and not replaced.
The Telegraph has 11 reporters – a number the union says is far too low to cover a population area close to 800,000.
In a mark of protest union members will take a full hour’s lunch on Friday - 30 minutes more than they are allowed. On 5 November staff will take part in a chapel meeting during working hours as part of a national day of union action.
NUJ northern organiser Chris Morley stressed that it was up to union members whether the action lasted “five minutes or all day”.
Oct 24 2007 14:11
#2
It’s most likely to come from journalists taking on printers’ language for union organising (they were at it about 400 years before us). From that context, it could refer to a variety of things, one theory being it’s from the unique style of caps that printers used to wear, another that it’s based in the fact printworks first really came into widespread use in a church/chapel context, and it’s also possible that calling unions ‘chapels’ was a sneaky way of getting around the early anti-combination laws.
Oct 25 2007 10:08
#3
ah, interesting, cheers.
interesting stuff, best of luck to 'em. i've often wondered why the NUJ calls its branches 'chapels'. is there some historical reason or are they just doing it for fun?