Blogs » Pete Jenkins' blog
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Pete Jenkins is the Vice Chair of the Photographers' Sub Committee of the National Union of Journalists and is an active campaigner for photographers' rights. |  |
The Scots are revolting
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 8:30amI have been hearing little snippets about the negotiations going on at the Glasgow based herald-Times group for some time, I have even been asked my opinion on a few small matters pertaining to the negotiations, but the report on EPUK worries me hugely.
The Herald seems to have the largest staff of photographers left in the country, and as such this should be commended. However, what is reported as being the agreement the company is imposing is very worrying.
One of the issues, not really touched on in the report is that the company appear to be playing staff and freelances of against each other. If freelances are made cheaper then they will undercut the staffers. If the group thinks it can get freelances cheaper then it clearly won’t keep a large staff retinue – do you remember the Manchester Evening News? They made six staffers redundant, and allowed those who wanted to work freelance to carry on working at (I believe) £120 a day (Inc travel). As the staffers had been paid in the region of £27,000+, plus had all their equipment and expenses paid for/supplied this made freelancing for the MEN hardly a plum assignment.
Back to the Herald.
Newspaper rates of remuneration have hardly changed since around 1994, except of course many papers now argue the toss over expenses, or try and make them all-inclusive. Space rates are no better, and in the case of the broadsheets that have gone Berliner, have actually decreased, as the Guardian for instance pays basically the same rate for a 5x7 in the Berliner as it did in the Broadsheet version. Sound fair, until you realise that the acreage of photos used in the new look Guardian plummeted from is Broadsheet version. Great for the publisher, slap in the face with a wet haddock for the photographer.
Demanding that 2nd and subsequent use of images should be for free is not fair to photographers. This is a blatant ‘something for nothing deal here. What does the photographer get – nothing?
Exclusivity – another rip off. One of the ways in which Newspaper editorial photographers can make a living – we are still being paid 1994 rates remember – is that we can resell the pictures we take to other outlets. Exclusivity removes this income stream from us.
Ah but we will do the syndication say the paper. Oh yeah? If the syndication department at the Herald was up to the job then I can assure you the photographers would not be crying ‘foul’. I know of no newspaper syndication department that actually does as good a job as a photographer syndicating his or her own work.
The newspaper publishers see syndicating our work as another golden egg to be exploited. But there is no golden egg. Syndicating our own work enables us to keep working at the low rates that newspapers insist on paying us. Twenty years ago photographers had a good living working on the commission rates paid. With the lack of increase, leading to the lowering of pay compared to inflation, the increase in equipment prices, the general cost of living, the price of fuel, without being able to syndicate our own work we simply could not afford to work as professional editorial photographers. There is no golden egg here, this is simply finding an extra few pounds out of some jobs to enable us to pay our mortgages and pay our bills.
What would enforced syndication mean to the newspaper. Bugger all probably…
© Pete Jenkins
www.petejenkins.co.uk
www.photographerspro.eu/pete_jenkins/
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