Journalists encouraged to join trade unions

The Executive Director of WACAM, Mr. Daniel Owusu Koranteng, has recommended Unions to journalists, especially those in the digital media.

Joining Unions, he said will help address most of the challenges confronting journalists in the country.

He said this at a seminar for journalists in Ghana dubbed, “Digital Organising, Trade Union Reforms, and Youth Recruitment.”

The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), in collaboration with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) organised the seminar for journalists.

The objective of the two-day seminar was to train young journalists, especially those working online (all under 35 years old), to design campaign strategies to recruit their online peers into the GJA.

Those who participated in the seminar are expected to serve as ambassadors of the GJA and help promote the work of the association among their peers.

Journalists drawn from various media houses in Ghana participated in the seminar.

The seminar treated topics including, “Why do we need to organize the digital media as a journalists’ trade union?” “Guarding against online exploitation of young journalists and defending their welfare,” facilitated by Mr. Palouis Thomasi, Director of the IFJ Africa Secretariat in Dakar.

Others were, “Freelance Journalists and the Decent Work Agenda: Engaging and recruiting Young freelance journalists and fighting for decent wages.”

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Speaking at the seminar, Mr. Daniel Owusu Koranteng observed that most journalists do not join unions because they are scared of losing their jobs, while the employers also do not agree that their workers should join the unions.

Employers who are scared of their workers joining unions will also benefit if their workers join unions.

He explained that the workers will have representatives who will negotiate with media owners when there is an issue, adding that they will not take things into their own hands when there is an issue or they are not happy about something.

He urged the GJA to build a strong and democratic media union that is capable of organising, bargaining, and having campaigning capacity to undertake the following activities: organizing the unorganized sections of the media space, especially the digital media; negotiating collective agreements to cover the employment conditions of members, with special emphasis on those working in the digital media; Developing campaigns for the government to establish national regulations to guide the operations of digital media and ensuring that media professionals operate based on high ethical standards

“GJA should organise sensitisation workshops to equip its members on the benefits and challenges of the Digital Media,” he said.

At the end of the seminar, all participants were awarded certificates.