Why Join Working Journalists of India
“Union!” “Journalists union!” “Me — a member!” “Why should I?” “I don’t need a union. I can make my career myself.”
This is the oft-heard reaction when a working journalist is approached to join a union. What these youthful journalists don’t realize or decide to ignore in their bravado is that newspaper work is a teamwork. No one can claim single-handedly the credit for producing any day’s newspaper anywhere. It can, therefore, be justifiably said that no one can build a career for himself alone if all others in the editorial don’t stand with him shoulder-to-shoulder and look after, what in journalistic parlance is called, each other’s child i.e. the page being made by individual members of the editorial board or the story being written by a reporter.
This is nothing new. It is in fact the ancient Greek art of warfare wherein every soldier was trained not only to face and fight the enemy in his front but also to remain alert all the time and defend the fellow soldiers on his left and right both. This is why it is a common sight in every editorial everywhere persons getting up from their seats now and then and walking up to others’ and asking `what is the progress’ and ‘whether he needs help’.
We, the members of the Working Journalists of India (WJI), do this always. We watch our members’ interests always. We defend them always. We stand with them shoulder-to-shoulder everywhere. We readily agree to fight for their justified rights always. We very often wonder and feel that the word ‘union’ is a misnomer in our title. We are not just a national union of journalists — we are, in fact, a ‘national family of journalists’. This is for this reason that we say “Join our family”.
WORKING JOURNALISTS OF INDIA (WJI) is a journalists union registered under Trade Union Act vide No: DLC/CD/TD/29/2017 on an all-India basis with reach up to district and rural levels. It is the first journalist’s union affiliated with the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh which is the second biggest worker’s union in the entire world. The Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh Will always stand with us shoulder-to-shoulder in all our struggles for the rights of journalists everywhere in India. The WJI along with the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh will always besides journalists’ interests, work for national interests.
The newspaper owners in India who are seeking to weaken editorial responsibility and independence and destroy working journalists’ unions therefore pose a grave danger in their aim to Indian democracy itself. There has to be a strong and rising public demand for legislative and other steps to prevent this devil of media monopolies from raising their heads in India.