CONGRATULATIONS  to journalists at Trinity Mirror in the Midlands for averting threatened compulsory redundancies at their newspapers.

The threat of a one-day strike by journalists this Thursday, seems to have brought Trinity bosses to their senses.

The strike has now been called off after Trinity, publishers of the Daily Mirror, agreed to withdraw compulsory job losses in an effort to maintain the company’s massive profits.

But the closure of a series of Trinity weekly titles in the Midlands has still gone ahead -  just like at other Trinity regional and local newspapers nationwide.

The Birmingham victory is a small but important step forward in the campaign to stand up for local newspapers, which are often the lifeblood of local communities.

Unfortunately, we cannot find any report of the NUJ’s victory in the Trinity titles, the Birmingham Post and Mail.

However, it is to be hoped that the news that  job losses are not inevitable in the recession will spread further afield and help encourage other union members to unite and campaign against the cuts in local newspapers.

Meanwhile in Liverpool, Trinity Mirror will next week switch daily printing of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo from the city, along the M62 and past the centre of Manchester to Oldham, as another cost-cutting measure in a series which have already included job losses, pay freezes and newspaper closures on Merseyside.

• Trinity Mirror made a £196million profit in 2007 and  has paid out £520million to shareholders in the last ten years.