Owen Jones to discuss publishing pay and conditions at Unite event

Author, Guardian columnist and political activist Owen Jones is speaking at "United, We Publish", an evening debate hosted by Unite and BookMachine focused on pay and conditions in the UK publishing industry.

The event, which also explores the power of union collective bargaining in publishing, will be held at St Bride’s Foundation in London on 14th July.

The aim of the evening is to review the current position of workers in the UK publishing industry, together with discussion around various models of how workers pay should be decided.

Jones will give an introduction to the event, with other speakers that follow comprising Simon Dubbins, international director, Unite the Union, and Michelle Stanistreet, the first woman in history to be elected general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (UK and Ireland). The event will be chaired by Gareth Lowe, chair of Unite’s national publishing and media branch and a publishing programme manager at DK. Speakers will also take questions from the audience.

Laura Summers, co-founder of BookMachine, a community of over 5,000 subscribers, said: “Feedback from last year’s Unite/BookMachine workshop was great. The post popular topic was Pay and conditions. Our role is to listen to this, and facilitate the discussion – it has been a pleasure working with Unite again and we are delighted to have such highly-regarded speakers on the panel discussing this important issue.”

Louisa Bull, Unite's lead officer for publishing said: “Employers in publishing have different attitudes to pay and reward schemes and Unite are keen to promote the merits of collective pay bargaining for our UK members.  Many of the employers we deal with in this sector have different pay systems across Europe and we are keen in this panel debate the understand the merits of them all."

Unite is the country’s largest union with over 10,000 members in the media, print and publishing sectors.