-- An appeal by Journalists & other Newspaper Employees

This is an appeal to support journalists and other employees of India’s newspaper industry.  We have been struggling for years to get a fair deal from our employers. We are underpaid and over-exploited by a booming newspaper industry.
A glance at the leading dailies will show you page after page of advertisements and sponsored features. Newspapers are thriving. But not their employees. Many of us are contracts workers. Retired journalists struggle to find work as the average pension is less than two thousand rupees.
We agitated for wage revision and finally got the Government of India to appoint a Wage Board for the industry, as per the Working Journalists Act. The Government set up a Tripartite Wage Board, headed by a retired judge and including representatives of the newspaper owners, the employees and the Government.
The Majithia Wage Board announced its Wage Award and the Government of India notified it on Nov.11, 2011.  But the newspaper and news agency owners refused to implement the Award they had been a party to. Instead they challenged it in the Supreme Court. This month, on Feb.7, 2014 the Supreme Court ruled in our favour, ordering the implementation of the Wage Award.
We now appeal to you all to support our demand that the newspaper owners implement the Award as ordered by the Supreme Court. The ruling is unequivocal and we express our gratitude to the Court for it. At a time when the credibility of the courts is under attack, this impartial verdict reinforces our faith in the judiciary.  The battery of highly paid top lawyers, employed by the dozen odd newspaper owners who went to court, was unable to deny us justice.
Regrettably, instead of implementing the Supreme Court order the Times of India has begun a campaign against it, misusing its pages to critique and condemn the order. We have no right of reply. The views of newspapers unions are routinely blacked out by the daily press. So much for the freedom of the press!
Please sign this petition asking the Indian Newspaper Society, the organization of newspaper owners, to gracefully accept the Wage Award and advise its members to back wages and revise pay scales in accordance with the Award.

S.K. Pande and Sujata Madhok
Delhi Union of Journalists