MEAA statement on the strike action by MEAA members at Fairfax mastheads: Fairfax Media editorial staff are on strike MEAA members at the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, The Newcastle Herald, The Illawarra Mercury and The Canberra Times are on strike in protest at the company’s latest plan to cut jobs and cut quality. Staff at The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review have rejected Fairfax Media’s plan to impose 70 job cuts to their mastheads. Management chose to give affected staff members 20 minutes’ notice ahead of meetings in which many were told their jobs had disappeared. Others found out about the threat to their jobs via email. The jobs under threat include 30 of the finest photojournalists in the country – leaving only 10 photographers behind nationally and outsourcing photography to an agency. Another 25 jobs would be lost from editorial production putting the quality of journalism that appears in print and online at risk. Another 15 people would go from the company’s “Life Media” division which produces some of the most loved journalism in Australia. In total, 70 people would be made redundant in yet another short-sighted cost-cutting move that is an assault on journalism. 150 jobs were lost in 2012. With so many redundancy rounds over so many years, finally the editorial staff at Fairfax is fed up with the indecision and the outsourcing that is destroying a great media company. At stop-work meetings Fairfax journalists including photographers and production staff called on company management to: • Effectively consult with staff members about the changes. • Establish staff-and-management committees to carry out this consultation and genuinely explore alternative methods to achieve cost savings. • Engage genuinely with staff about the future of the newsroom. Managements decision is a slap in the face to Fairfax editorial staff’s willingness and ability to co-operate with managers in making the difficult decisions required to ensure the future of a quality-focused, independent newsroom. Management’s action shows an inability to discern what is “core” and “non-core” inside Fairfax Media, when photography, writers in sections and production staff acting as the guardians of quality are somehow regarded as “non-core”. Fairfax staff members call on Fairfax management to acknowledge and engage the years of expertise inside the company before consigning our newsrooms to a future of pieceworkers and outworkers.
Posted on: Wed, 07 May 2014 09:16:51 +0000
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