At the end of last week, a workshop on organizing in the media field was held in Budapest: “Strength is in the union”. The workshop is part of the Journalism Breakthroughs Project led by the working group for media and technology from the CEU Democracy Institute – (Central European University). At one of the sessions, there was talk about ways of financing trade union activities, and the member of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, Petra Ivšić, also participated in it.
Most of the talk was about the organization of media workers, but also about the work itself in the trade union. A significant source of inspiration was drawn from the work of labor movements that succeeded in mobilizing vulnerable and oppressed groups. Part of the audience from the countries of the former Yugoslavia was familiar with the fight of the Slovenian trade union on RTV Slovenia. We have also supported and reported about their struggle several times.
However, for most of the participants, the struggle in Slovenia was new, so in the continuation of the discussion, the topic often appeared as a rarely good example of the solidarity and struggle of workers in the media.
There was also talk about freelancers and freelance work, as an increasingly frequent form of work, which is very problematic when it comes to existential security, and basic rights such as sick leave and the right to a pension.
At the panel on project financing, it was emphasized how much contract work causes great emotional stress for media and other workers, since project financing is uncertain and often unsustainable in the long term. The irony of the case is that in the world today we have very few opportunities to hear about the struggles of workers in the media because these workers themselves do not report much about their work status. That is why one of the conclusions of this two-day meeting is that sharing experiences and knowledge is extremely important for some future struggles for better conditions for workers in the media, both in Southeast Europe and beyond.
Workshop participants and panel guests were mainly journalists, activists and trade unionists from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Some of the attendees were Jakov Kolak, editor-in-chief of the Radnička Prava portal and member of the Regional Industrial Union – RIS from Croatia; Marko Miletić, editor-in-chief of the Mašina portal from Serbia; Helena Milinković, political journalist at RTV Slovenia and president of the coordination of journalists unions of Radiotelevision Slovenia, Nóra Ugron, coordinator of ELMO – Eastern European Left Media Outlet from Romania, and participants from Slovakia, Great Britain and Hungary.