Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal UK management have halted voluntary recognition talks with the National Union of Journalists to instead recognise News Union, the union funded by its sister company News UK.

Managers told staff on Tuesday afternoon it was doing this because the NUJ “would only represent a small subset of our colleagues”, whereas News Union “are able to represent all eligible Dow Jones International employees, not just those in the Newsroom”.

The news provoked anger from the NUJ’s general secretary, who called it “a blatantly cynical attempt to circumvent our members’ right to collective representation by the trade union of their choice”.