NUT and MU win top union award

Union journals The Teacher and Musician have won joint top spot in the annual Union Communications Awards organised by the TUC.

In the end the judges could not choose between the two magazines from the NUT teachers’ union and the MU musicians’ union. They found that each strongly demonstrated one of two possible ways of appealing to their readership: “Musician was widely admired for its production values, its advice pages and its appeal to musicians as professionals, whereas The Teacher went ... more for an appeal to readers as union members,” they said.

The MU came out top for two more awards — for best one-off publication (for its Members Handbook 2008) and for best website, while the NUT won best use of e-communications with its Fair Pay for Teachers micro-site.

Other winners were: best feature from the FBU firefighters’ union for “A tangible sense of loss”; best campaign from UNISON public services union for Strong Yet Caring; and best use of a photograph from the NUJ journalists’ union and photographer Alan Wylie.