Union officials say company has failed to honour agreement to negotiate pay annually

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Staff at al-Jazeera’s English-language TV channel have voted to go on strike next month in protest at pay and conditions.

London-based employees will walk out for 24 hours on 9 May, with employees planning to spend the day on a picket line outside the broadcaster’s office in the Shard skyscraper near London Bridge.

Union officials at al-Jazeera English, which is funded by the Qatari government, said the company has failed to honour an agreement to negotiate pay on an annual basis.

“We’ve been very patient,” said Brian Ging, the National Union of Journalists’ deputy father of chapel at the broadcaster. “We’ve had an agreement with the company for three years on pay and they’ve never honoured that. We’re devastated to be walking away from the jobs we love but we’ve been left with no choice.”

An overwhelming majority of staff belonging to the NUJ and Bectu, which represents technical staff, have now voted to back industrial action in an attempt to force concessions from management.



Al-Jazeera English is based in Doha but has about 130 staff in London, whose responsibilities include producing the news channel’s output between 4pm and 10.30pm GMT. These programmes are likely to be affected by the strike action.



Union officials said they expect a substantial proportion of London-based al-Jazeera English staff to take part in the walkout, including on-air presenters, programme editors, field producers, reporters, camera operators and studio technical staff.

After the strike, union members have pledged to adopt a policy of work-to-rule, including refusing to answer phone calls or emails outside of working hours and taking allotted breaks.

“Journalists don’t take lunch breaks,” said Ging. “We’ll be taking lunch breaks.”

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Union officials said they remain open to resuming meaningful negotiations at any point and will consider suspending strike action if they believe there is a chance of achieving progress on a pay deal.

Al-Jazeera did not respond to a request for comment.

The news channel’s influential Arab-language sister station is at the centre of a dispute between Qatar and other Arab states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain.

The countries were among those that severed diplomatic relations with Doha last summer, imposed a trade blockade on Qatar, and issued a list of 13 demands including the shutdown of al-Jazeera and its affiliate stations.