”Two weeks ago I would have been much more pessimistic when it comes to ‘Social Europe’, but it seems that the European Commission led by President Jean-Claude Juncker  is working on a package, which has a strong social dimension, something the EU has lacked dramatically in recent years,” said Thomas Händel (GUE/NGL, Germany), Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. Philippe Leruth, Chair of the EFJ Labour Rights Expert Group and EFJ Director Renate Schroeder had a open discussion with the German MEP Händel covering themes such as the increasingly precarious working conditions in the  media and journalism…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) have called for stronger rights for freelance workers and the need to enforce their fundamental rights to collective bargaining in national and European legislations. The call came after a workshop hosted by the NUJ on Collective bargaining for atypical workers in the audio-visual and live performance sector as part of a capacity building project organised by the EFJ, the International Federation of Actors (FIA), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the International Federation of Musicians (FIM) and UNI-MEl. Participants including unions leaders from the-above federations and legal…

Update (20.08.2015) The European Federation of Journalists sent today a letter to Politico CEO Jim VandeHei expressing its concern about news reports suggesting that Mike Elk, Labor reporter at Politico and co-author of the Louisville Statement, has been fired. Politico confirmed, on Thursday, Mike Elk’s departure, saying it has “nothing to do with his union activities”. Supported by his union, Mike Elk replied that he is on vacation until September 1st: he considers he is still an employee of Politico. ———- Over 12,000 jobs have disappeared from the US media industry, over the last decade. But according to Pew Research Center’s count, 5,000 full-time…

As a follow-up to the case of Željko Peratović, a freelance journalist and blogger who has been attacked at his home on May 28, 2015 in an attempted murder, the Croatian Journalists’ Association (Hrvatsko Novinarsko Drustvo, an EFJ-IFJ affiliate) is reminding the authorities with several cases of death threats and attacks on journalists which are still not resolved. “It is one year since freelancer Domagoj Margetić has been beaten up in front of his apartment in Zagreb. The Croatian State Attorney defined that attack as attempted murder but not the attacker or motifs, nor the person(s) who possibly ordered it…

In the framework of the project “Reaching out to atypical workers” funded by the European Commission, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) together with its affiliate, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), in Ireland will organise a workshop on “Collective bargaining for atypcial workers” on 8 & 9 September in Dublin.  Workshop discussion summary EFJ calls for stronger rights for freelance workers Agenda The workshop is part of the joint project with partners FIA, UNI-MEI and FIM to address the challenges facing by unions in the sector to represent freelance workers and defend their rights. Key issues include: Collective bargaining…

Working as freelance journalists can be considered as a crime in Belarus. Since the beginning of this year, the Belarusian authority has filed 24 cases (see infographic below) against freelance journalists imposing fines for their works. In all the cases, the journalists are accused of violating article 22.9 of the administrative code (unlawful production and distribution of mass media products). According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an affiliate of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the total sum of the fines imposed on journalists so far this year amounted to 117 million Belarusian rubles (over 6.000 EUR). The EFJ…