NUJ Black Members Council holds successful General Meeting

Members met online and in-person, joined by guest speaker Carol Ferguson, TUC equality and strategy support officer.

The NUJ Black Members Council (BMC) general meeting took place on Saturday 17 May. The meeting was chaired by Tony Adams who was warmly welcomed back to the council. 

Laura Davison, NUJ general secretary, joined members at the meeting along with the Natasha Morris, NUJ's Legal and Equality officer.

The report of activities for the past two years was given by Roger McKenzie and included the work done for TUC Black Workers Conference 2024 where the council's motion on underrepresentation of Black journalists was carried unanimously TUC Black Workers’ Conference 2024, and for 2025 where the council's motion called for TUC campaigning to oppose the core tenets of race science and policies of mass expulsion of migrants NUJ delegation to TUC Black Workers’ Conference expose ‘Race Science’. The report also highlighted the 2024 Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture which was held in December with US based journalist and writer Margaret Kimberley, executive editor of Black Agenda Report just days after Donald Trump's election. Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture 2024

The guest speaker for Saturday's conference was Carol Ferguson Equality and Strategy Support Officer from the TUC. Ferguson spoke determinedly about 'And then it clicked...' a report on Black women's experience of sexual harassment in the workplace. The Report found that 65% of respondents to the TUC’s survey in 2024 experienced sexual harassment of some form, with high rates of unwelcome verbal sexual advances, unwanted touching, or sexual jokes. The work is now aiming to build a network of Black women ambassadors and to create spaces where Black women can come together and recommendations from this work can be fed into policy making structures. 

The Meeting featured engaged and lively debates, in which UK and International events had been discussed and the challenging times faced for many including journalists, highlighting that as journalists words matter and recognising that it is essential for the voices of black journalists to be heard.  The meeting also welcomed the growth in membership of the union’s Black journalists and the need to continue to build on the NUJ’s strength and activism.

The council discussed and agreed motions as part of proceedings,  calling for the BMC to respond to a consultation about the ethnicity pay gap in which the Office of National Statistics found that Black, African, Caribbean or Black British employees earned less median gross hourly pay than White employees; the motion highlighted the UK government's Equality (Race and Disability) bill and sought the NUJ parliamentary group's support in working on the bill.  A motion on the history of the BMC recognised the importance of celebrating past achievements but also to inform future generations which had been unanimously carried, leading to a further motion on updating the union's Race Reporting Guidelines.

The motion which called for the updated guidelines to be distributed to workplaces and freelance members. The conference closed with confirmation of elections to the BMC for the forthcoming two years. 

 

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