Integrate and Agitate

Saturday, 5 May .... From Thursday to Friday evening, I had about 2 hours sleep thanks to my work at Glasgow's election counts .... Then it was straight on a plane to head to London for our conference on so-called 'digital convergence'.

It was an excellent event, with representation from across all sectors and, indeed, colleagues from Scotland and Ireland too. The debate was at times peppered with strong views on what convergence will mean to our industry .... but let's be clear, this is as revolutionary as the advent of hot metal or the computerisation of the press.

We've missed the boat in some respects, where new working conditions have been imposed without adequate industrial response .... But we've been here before .... In the 1980s the union negotiated no less that 104 new technology agreements. We've done it before and we can and will do it again.

Already, we have good models in place, but the job of our short-term commission will be to provide a framework where every chapel across the union can ensure that the introduction of new working practices is at the heart of our industrial strategy.

Oh, and can we get out of this culture of treating online journalists differently from their colleagues in print and broadcast??? Journalists are journalists are journalists .... We need to fight for everyone's terms and conditions as cohesive units .... otherwise, management will simply divide and conquer and we wouldn't want that, would we???