Days before the Emergency Committee met to discuss NUJPhoto, list owner Jenkins closed down the list, only to open up NVJPhoto – an almost identical lookalike list, run independently of the union and without union endorsement.

“Crucial” role of email lists

General Secretary Jeremy Dear told the meeting that while he believed email discussion lists played a “crucial” role in communications within the union, officially sanctioned lists should operate within a clear set of rules and guidelines to avoid any such clash in the future.

Dooley had claimed that the confidential NUJPhoto list had included posts critical of his handling of the Drogheda house agreement, and he is understood to have indicated that he had leaked copies of the emails in his possession.

While the specific email comments were not revealed in the Emergency Committee minutes, and no representatives from NUJPhoto were invited to the meeting, the Emergency Committee passed a motion condemning “the abusive attacks and smears on the union and its officials in relation to this issue.”

But those familiar with the NUJPhoto discussions told EPUK that while the list discussion never rose to the level of personal abuse, and that list owner Pete Jenkins had personally reminded list members to be polite when addressing union officials in private correspondence.

For the second NEC meeting in succession, EPUK articles were read out to those present. The emergency committee meeting had earlier heard from Kyran Connelly who had said that he felt EPUK’s coverage of the Drogheda Independent controversy reflected an “anti-union” editorial stance, and that a Sqweegee opinion article had contained “unacceptable attacks on [NUJ] staff”. Jeremy Dear also used the same Sqweegee article at last weekend’s meeting as an example of the criticism the union was facing over its handling of the affair.

Other criticism not addressed

While the NEC meeting attempted to bring closure to the Drogheda Independent controversy, EPUK understands that did not address other aspects of the handling of the Drogheda Independent house agreement, such as allegations made by Irish members that the Drogheda Independent chapel had deliberately sought to not inform photographer members about aspects of the agreement until late in the negotiations.

There had also been criticism of the decision to allow the smaller Emergency Committee to handle the motion, instead of the full National Executive. It was argued that the use of the word ‘immediately’ in one of the two motions passed by the Irish Executive Council meant the matter needed to be addressed quickly by the smaller Emergency Committee. But the Emergency Committee chose only to discuss the motion which did not contain the word “immediately”, leaving the more pressing but less important issue for another three weeks to be discussed by the full NEC meeting.

The Emergency Committee minutes also make passing reference to unsubstantiated allegations made at a chapel meeting that union officials may have received bribes to ensure the house agreement passed in its current form.

The NEC meeting is also believed to have not discussed allegations made in the union’s own magazine that an official forum on the Stand Up for Journalism campaign website was deliberately closed down to stop a discussion on the Drogheda Independent deal.

Multi-skilling survey

The NEC also resolved to conduct a survey into how widespread the practice of reporters taking photographs as part of their job actually is. At the moment, only anecdotal evidence exists as to how widespread the practice actually is, and whether it occurs only at newspapers who would not be able to otherwise employ a full photographic staff.

While last week’s EPUK survey showed that only 9% of photographers agreed with the statement “reporters taking photographs is the inevitable consequence of technological change and the NUJ should support it”, Irish Executive Committee member Barry McCall told the Emergency Committee that he believed that there were ‘thousands’ of the NUJ’s 35,000 members who also took photographs as part of their jobs as reporters.

If the survey does indeed show that the practice is widespread, many of the union’s 2,300 photographer members could be forced to choose whether they persuade the union to fight to reverse the tide of multi-skilling, or whether the union should accept and therefore tacitly endorse the practice in future negotiations.

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