IAPE Outraged at Dow Jones UK Union Busting

The Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees (IAPE), Local 1096 of The NewsGuild-CWA, calls on Dow Jones management to stop outrageous union busting efforts at its London offices.

In February of this year, newsroom staff at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in London organized as a chapel under the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and served notice on Dow Jones management that they sought recognition as an independent union.

Yesterday, just three days before Dow Jones's deadline to voluntarily recognize NUJ, or else face their petition with a UK arbitration body, Dow Jones Chief People Officer Dianne DeSevo informed staff that “the Company decided not to recognize the NUJ as it would only represent a small subset of our colleagues,” and that instead, “we looked at the representative body for our sister companies, News UK and NCS UK, at London Bridge.”

“We felt News Union was a better option than the NUJ because they are able to represent all eligible Dow Jones International (DJI) employees, not just those in the Newsroom,” DeSevo wrote. “Therefore, the Company has signed a recognition agreement with News Union.”

It must be springtime, because that’s a lot of fertilizer.

In a statement released today, our colleagues and organizers of the NUJ effort said, “Dow Jones employees representing a strong majority of eligible NUJ members in London have been speaking in good faith with the company in an effort to reach agreement about independent union recognition we believe would be good for the company and its employees. We are disappointed the company chose instead to bypass these discussions in favor of a company-organized and company-funded News Corp. union that until now Dow Jones had not recognized. We are seeking advice about our options under these circumstances.”

NUJ General Secretary Laura Davison called Dow Jones’s union busting action “a blatantly cynical attempt to circumvent our members’ right to collective representation by the trade union of their choice.”

In 2001, News Union was denied a certificate of independence because a UK certificator deemed it had “not yet reached the stage where it can be said that the vulnerability to interference by the employer is insignificant.”

News Union receives almost all its income from News UK and NCS UK. Annual filings from News Union indicate it does not generate any revenue from membership dues.

IAPE knows a company union when it sees one. While the National Labor Relations Act outlawed such bodies in the United States in 1935, IAPE was first incorporated in 1937 as the Dow Jones Employees Association as a means of keeping strong, international unions—like what was then known as the American Newspaper Guild, which would eventually become The NewsGuild of today—out of the WSJ newsroom.

This is a despicable way for history to repeat itself.

After decades of fighting to become a true union, IAPE eventually established itself as a representative body for Dow Jones employees in the United States and Canada, affiliated with the Communications Workers of America in 1996 and eventually became a full-fledged Guild local union.

We see no reason why our colleagues in the United Kingdom should experience a similar struggle. IAPE calls on Dow Jones management to respect the democratic choice made by its employees in London, and to recognize the NUJ as the rightful bargaining agent for WSJ and Newswires staff, as petitioned for in February.

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The Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, Local 1096 of The NewsGuild-CWA, is the union for employees of Dow Jones & Company working in the United States and Canada. IAPE represents over 1,300 employees in News, Sales, Technology, Administration, Finance, Customer Service and Building Support departments at all Dow Jones products and publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s MarketWatch, Factiva, Dow Jones Newswires and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance.

For more information, contact union@iape1096.org