{"id":10886,"date":"2016-12-19T15:43:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T15:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=10886"},"modified":"2016-12-19T15:43:32","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T15:43:32","slug":"back-to-the-80s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=10886","title":{"rendered":"Back to the 80s?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Penguin Random House \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the publisher of top selling books such as\u00c2\u00a0Girl on the Train, Fifty Shades of Grey\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0Jamie Oliver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cookbooks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has decided to terminate collective agreements and recognition with Unite and the NUJ.<\/p>\n

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This smacks of a return to the bad days of the early 1980s, when publishers de-recognised the print unions and the NUJ for little reason other than they could.<\/p>\n

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The RHP announcement follows IT giant Fujitsu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to terminate its Information and Consultation committee, Fujitsu Voice, simply because it was working well and the I&C reps (many of them Unite members) were holding the company to account at meetings.<\/p>\n

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So much for Theresa May\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (now abandoned) idea to give workers a voice in their companies!<\/p>\n

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Penguin Random House says it decided to terminate its collective agreement with Unite and the NUJ after talks aimed at protecting staff redundancy terms broke down.<\/p>\n

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The company is the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biggest book publisher, formed after a merger between Penguin and the German-owned Random House four years ago.<\/p>\n

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Union members and workers acted with fury at the decision announced in an email to the workforce by CEO Tom Weldon.\u00c2\u00a0PRH is company where there have been excellent industrial relations and long-standing co-operation by journalists and professional publishing staff.<\/p>\n

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Many of the staff have long years of experience in the company and in publishing industry. No way could workers and members at PRH be described as \u00e2\u20ac\u0098militants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

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The company says it will only de-recognise Unite and the NUJ at its London sites and maintain union recognition at the Frating, Grantham and Rugby sites.<\/p>\n

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As Unite\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Louisa Bull said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI have been responsible for representing members at the company for over 20 years and I cannot recall one single dispute.<\/p>\n

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Thin end of the wedge<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis is the thin end of the wedge that could lead to further erosion of pay and terms and conditions for staff.<\/p>\n

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PRH will suffer enormous reputational damage if they plow ahead with these misguided plans.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0098Many of Penguin Random House\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s authors and readers will be disturbed to hear about this turn of events\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, said Fiona Swarbrick, an NUJ national organiser.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBy de-recognising the NUJ and Unite, Penguin Random House has blatantly disregarded the views and wishes of its employees and has significantly damaged the good reputation of the business as being one which cares about people.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Despite offering various compromises on the pension scheme and a proposal to take the matter to ACAS, Weldon has ignored every attempt to resolve the issue and turned down the ACAS talks proposal.<\/p>\n

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He said the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aim was to ensure \u00e2\u20ac\u0098parity and equity for all London colleagues and ensure no groups of people are treated differently on account of where they are based or where they previously worked\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

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He added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0098I am sorry to say we have not been able to reach an agreement that achieves this, and as a result our formal relationship with Unite and NUJ in London has come to an end.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

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PRH workers have now begun to join Unite and the NUJ as our unions gear up for a campaign to reverse the decision and get back to harmonious working. A number of prominent authors have already expressed support.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reconsider<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Author,\u00c2\u00a0columnist and broadcaster Owen Jones, whose book The Establishment\u00c2\u00a0is published by Penguin, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bPenguin: please urgently reconsider this decision and give the workers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who make your company the huge success that it is \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the rights and protections that they deserve.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A high-profile children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s author, who wished to remain anonymous, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d all like to imagine that publishers hold themselves to higher standards than banks and sweatshops, that they strive to represent the best philosophical values of society and treat their employees with respect. When this no longer holds true, we are all poorer.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what is driving this\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, Fiona Swarbrick of the NUJ said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0098We have just settled pay negotiations and, as far as we know, no further redundancies are planned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bDropping this now is incredibly bad: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Christmas; this is the book trade; people are working incredibly hard because it is the busiest time of the year.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite and the NUJ are planning now to use the Central Arbitration Committee, the statutory body that adjudicates trade union recognition and collective bargaining, to win back union recognition and collective bargaining.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They will also mount a high profile campaign in the media, politically, industrially and internationally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This comment first appeared in Left Foot Forward<\/a>, December 19<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Penguin Random House \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the publisher of top selling books such as\u00c2\u00a0Girl on the Train, Fifty Shades of Grey\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0Jamie Oliver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cookbooks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has decided to terminate collective agreements and recognition with Unite and the NUJ.   This smacks of a return to the bad days of the early 1980s, when publishers de-recognised the print unions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[659,304],"wps_subtitle":"Publisher workforce fights union attacks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10887,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886\/revisions\/10887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}