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February 10, 2005updated 22 Nov 2022 2:19pm

Regional pay wage cartel still operates

By Press Gazette

Last year Press Gazette wrote an excellent feature on regional pay for journalists – but sadly it seems nothing has changed.

I
have six years of experience and yet I only earn just over £16,000. I
cannot afford to live on this so I am effectively being forced out of a
job I love to go into a better-paid PR job.

In Roy Greenslade’s
article in The Guardian on local pay, we saw Newsquest bleating on that
its wages are comparable to those offered by other companies.

Of
course they are. The large newspaper companies in this country have
managed to form a local journalistic wage cartel. By all paying similar
– but still terrible – wages, journalists can either stay where they
are and keeping fighting unsuccessfully for a pay rise or move for a
few pence more.

If just one company took the step of offering
decent wages, others would be forced to as well – and this company
would have its pick of staff. These companies all know there is a
problem, they know journalists are unhappy but yet they arrogantly try
to defend their position.

Such a situation is not healthy for
journalists nor for the British media. I notice that following the
Press Gazette article, not one chief executive of any of the large
groups had the courage to write in to explain why they pay such poor
wages.

Name and address supplied

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