Redundancies
In November 2016 News Corp Australia announced it would cut $40 million in costs after the company experienced an 11 per cent decline in advertising revenue. The latest cuts come after the Australian operations had already slashed costs by 5 per cent in the second half of fiscal 2016.
MEAA believes that News Corp editorial staff had made enormous sacrifices in a cooperative effort to improve efficiencies and productivity in the business. “Far too often these sacrifices have been made with little or no recognition or recompense from management. MEAA calls on the company to provide assurances that any redundancies will be on a voluntary basis.”
MEAA noted that the company has said the latest cuts are “to allow for continued investment in quality journalism”. MEAA said: “The company’s decision to pursue a more digitally-focused approach must recognise that editorial staff are working harder, over more hours, filing for multiple platforms, and are utilising an extraordinarily diverse set of skills in response to the digital transformation taking place in the industry.
“News Corp has benefited greatly from these sacrifices. News Corp must accept that genuine investment in quality journalism must not trample on editorial staff who are the engine room of News Corp’s products,” MEAA said.
While the company has maintained a program of “tapping people on the shoulder” to steadily reduce job numbers, on April 11 the company announced in a newsroom meeting that it would be making the majority of the photographers and sub-editors working on its Australian tabloid newspapers redundant.
MEAA condemned the cuts to front-line editorial staff. In some cities, up to two-thirds of the photographic staff would be cut. Staff were told redundant photographers would be able to freelance back for News Corp, and provide content as freelancers via photographic contractors Getty and AAP.
Management also flagged significant changes to work practices with earlier deadlines, greater copy sharing across cities and mastheads, and journalists taking up more responsibility for production elements and proofing their own work, which has journalists concerned about already stretched news gathering resources and maintaining the editorial standards of their mastheads.
MEAA’s Media section director Katelin McInerney said: “The job redundancies that will result, which will only serve to strip vital editorial talent from the company’s mastheads, harm the very products that News Corp’s audiences value and end up being self-defeating because of the damage they do.
“These are mastheads that pride themselves on being newspapers of the people and a voice for the communities they serve — these cuts serve no-one.
“News Corp readers and the communities that these journalists serve deserve better. Once again it is front line editorial staff in already stretched newsrooms — the very people audiences rely on to tell their stories — who are bearing the brunt of these short-sighted cuts for short-term shareholder gains,” McInerney said.
“Time and time again we have seen that cuts to front line media staff ultimately do not deliver the kinds of savings for media companies that get them out of the woods,” she said.
“Cutting the very staff who tell the stories of our society’s marginalised and vulnerable — particularly those photojournalists who create the images we, as audiences, rely on to cut to the heart of an issue in a powerful, compelling and instantaneous way — has proved an ultimately futile stop-gap measure for news companies,” McInerney said.
MEAA called on News Corp not to abandon the long-term investment it has made in photographic journalism, and to work with their staff and the union to build a robust and sustainable news business for News Corp, which invests in the people telling the stories.
At the end of March 2017, News Corp announced it would make 10 staff redundant at the Gold Coast Bulletin. MEAA members condemned the company’s handling of the announcement and the lack of early consultation with staff around the changes. Staff were read a script of the announcement by editorial management, and told the editor (a major decision maker) would be unavailable due to his leaving the country for three weeks on a holiday.
In September 2016, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission decided to allow the sale of News Corp Australia’s Sunday Times and PerthNow web site to Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media (SWM), owner of The West Australian.
As MEAA’s Western Australian Media section committee outlined in its submission to the ACCC, the sale will “make Perth a ‘one-newspaper’ town. By its very nature, the sale will lessen competition. We believe readers will suffer from a reduction in the quality of content, perhaps in both print publications, if staffing levels are reduced and journalists, photographers and artists have to do more with less (something that is already happening across the media industry). The proposed transaction [will] create business and media power in WA that is not replicated in any other part of Australia.”
MEAA is concerned the sale has put incredible power in the hands of one mogul, Kerry Stokes, whose business interests in WA extend far beyond the media. SWM shareholders and senior executives are also heavily involved in the Perth business scene at large and in dealings with the State Government. These dealings not only involve the customary regulatory approval and lobbying that is normal business practice, but also include attempts to acquire significant assets or significant contractual benefits through those dealings with the State Government. There is an obviously greater potential for problems in objectively reporting or analysing these business activities, especially involving government, when that same group controls all the daily newspapers in town.
MEAA’s WA regional director Tiffany Venning said: “While members (at The Sunday Times) are not surprised, they are deeply disappointed with the decision. Given that there were already 37 editorial jobs lost at The West Australian prior to this transaction being approved, there is considerable concern for staff at The Sunday Times and PerthNow.” The 37 jobs lost were made up of 25 voluntary redundancies and 12 forced redundancies.
MEAA wrote to both companies calling on them to engage in close consultation with editorial employees and their union.
MEAA urged Seven West Media to urgently adopt a charter of editorial independence across all its media business and to explore opportunities for staff to be redeployed to other editorial areas.
Following the sale, of The Sunday Times which had an editorial staff of 54, 12 did not apply for a position at the merged business, and took redundancy. A further 10–12 were not given a position. Four were redeployed within News. The balance of about 26 stayed to work with the new owners. The change in ownership also led to the loss of 100 printing positions in November 2016.
In March 2017, ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie unveiled plans to cut 200 jobs from the national public broadcaster, and create a $50 million content fund. Her public announcements, which MEAA described as being “light on detail and short on specifics”, suggested that the bulk of the jobs to be lost would be among middle management with part of the savings to be redirected to creating 80 new positions in regional areas.
But just hours after Guthrie’s announcement to staff that the restructure would free up more resources for content, production staff began being tapped on the shoulder for redundancy. A head count of 42 positions had been earmarked for redundancy. The jobs to be lost were in key production and operational support roles for television news and current affairs programs.
MEAA called Guthrie to immediately explain how job cuts in key technical support roles will not impact on the ABC’s news services.
MEAA Media director McInerney said: “These cuts to cameras, editing and other production support areas fly in the face of assurances made to staff at lunchtime yesterday that the redundancies would be concentrated in back office management,” McInerney.
“The restructure was spun as good news, with $50 million to be allocated to a new content fund, including new positions in regional Australia. But now it seems Guthrie is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
“News and current affairs staff at the ABC are already overworked and have generated considerable efficiency gains while continuing to produce world-class content. Their dedication to the job is second to none,” McInerney said.
“While management says no editorial positions will be affected, these cuts to production and operations staff cannot avoid having an impact on the delivery of quality news and current affairs to the Australian public.”
MEAA noted that the large number of redundancies announced were the result of a series of funding cuts to the ABC by the Coalition government. Since 2014, the ABC has endured more than $250 million in budget reductions.
“It was very disappointing to hear Michelle Guthrie refuse to stand up for ABC funding during last week’s Estimates hearings in Canberra,” McInerney said. “If the managing director of the ABC won’t champion the public broadcaster to government, who will?”
In May 2016 the ABC axed its Fact Check unit and made other editorial positions redundant — the inevitable result of funding cuts in the federal Budget. ABC management said 14 positions were to be cut from the Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne newsrooms.
The cuts are the result of the ABC’s enhanced newsgathering budget being cut by $18.6 million over the next three years.
MEAA CEO Paul Murphy said: “As we had warned, these cuts — on top of the more than $250 million which was cut in 2014 and 2015 — will place news services at the ABC under extreme pressure. The timing for this decision could not be worse: in the lead up to the federal election, when strong journalism to independently scrutinise politicians’ claims and counter-claims is needed.
“It is disturbing that even after these cuts, the director of ABC News, Gaven Morris, has warned of more challenges to continue delivering original and investigative journalism and local and regional newsgathering,” Murphy said.
While MEAA acknowledged that externally imposed budget cuts are behind the job losses, a fairer process could — and should — have been extended to the area’s facing cuts. A voluntary round would have allowed affected staff to make personal choices around exiting the organisation, as is practised by organisations such as News Corp and Fairfax.
In early April 2017 Fairfax Media announced a series of proposals to realise $30 million in cuts to the editorial budget and also released a “mission statement”.
MEAA members in the Fairfax Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms strongly condemned the $30 million cut, urging the company to engage in genuine consultation with staff about ways to achieve savings while not cutting jobs.
MEAA Media section director Katelin McInerney said members on the floor were invested in the future of the Fairfax mastheads and the independence of their journalism. “The Fairfax brand of independent journalism is attracting a record number of subscribers and readers because these journalists deliver the kind of fearless and objective journalism audiences in a post-truth world are so reliant upon,” she said.
“MEAA members in these newsrooms are committed to the delivery of fearless and objective journalism. That is why they are calling on the new leadership team at Fairfax to work with journalists at the coal face to find better ways to deliver that news, and find smarter sustainable ways to achieve savings. They reject the old lazy targeting of the very people the company relies upon; the people whose talent, skills and story-telling innovation are the key to the future success of the Fairfax brand of journalism,” McInerney said.
The meetings also roundly rejected the comments made in the company’s “mission statement”, arguing against management attempts to impose ideological direction and to interfere with masthead independence and their fair and fearless journalism.
“The Fairfax motto ‘Independent. Always’ and the dedication of Fairfax journalists to that motto underpins public trust in Fairfax — they believe any departure from that would be a betrayal of the trust audiences put in them,” McInerney said.
Previously, in April 2016, Fairfax had cut about 100 full-time equivalent positions in its metropolitan daily News and Business divisions in Sydney and Melbourne. About 20 jobs have been saved thanks to the intervention of MEAA members arguing for smarter cost-cutting options to be considered. Fairfax management exempted its executives from making sacrifices while rejecting many of the cost-saving initiatives suggested by staff that would have saved crucial editorial positions and maintained its ability to continue delivering high quality journalism.
Staff had earlier presented management with a job savings plan that included executive wage freezes, cuts to executive salaries and a reduction in the size of the board. These ideas were rejected by Fairfax management which claimed some of the cost savings were “outside the scope” of its cost savings “proposal”.
MEAA Media director McInerney said: “The loss of these jobs will severely affect Fairfax’s news gathering and reporting capability meaning that the real losers will be readers. It is not sustainable to expect the same output with 100 fewer journalists. Something has to give and it will be quality.
“The company has largely rejected sensible and creative alternative cost saving proposals put forward by its journalists — the people who best know and understand the business. The journalists are angry that the company has ruled out any reductions of executive bonuses and salaries. Collectively, the top four execs and the board earned almost $6.5 million last year,” McInerney said.
“The outcome of the consultation process with the company is highly unsatisfactory. The lack of clarity about how and where the redundancies will be achieved only deepens the concerns of journalists who worry about how their newsrooms will operate in future,” she said.
In November 2016 Fairfax Media effectively merged its Melbourne-based Metro Media Publishing division with its Domain business while, at the same time, switching the editorial focus of MMP’s nine Weekly Review community newspaper mastheads from local reporting to lifestyle stories. The decision to abandon local reporting led to the loss of 16 permanent positions and six casuals.
MEAA has good reason to believe that the forced redundancies at MMP were part of a deliberate strategy by the company to “de-unionise” its workforce.
MEAA condemned the deliberate targeting of union members and the poor way in which MMP management handled the entire process, which greatly added to the distress of the affected workers.
MEAA said: “Under the current management, The Weekly Review has now all but abandoned grassroots local reporting, and that is a great loss for the communities in which they are distributed.
We all understand that real estate and property advertising is the main source of revenue for the MMP newspapers, and it has always been that way for suburban newspapers. But we reject the way in which MMP has abandoned independent local journalism in pursuing its current strategy.”
MEAA Media director McInerney said: “Local audiences are entitled to local news. Fairfax intends to strip out its local content from its suburban newspapers and instead drop in national stories. By removing local editorial staff, Fairfax is stripping these titles of the necessary ‘boots on the ground’ that are needed to scrutinise and report on local issues that are important to the local community.
“In the process, Fairfax is making redundant loyal and dedicated editorial employees, many of them who joined MMP because it is a training ground and stepping stone for a career in journalism. This is a short-sighted cost saving measure that only goes to weaken the quality of journalism these newspapers produce. It is a move that treats both the audience and the journalists with disdain and contempt,” McInerney said.
The cash-strapped Network Ten was facing significant cost-cutting arising from the network’s debts, including a $200 million debt with the Commonwealth Bank.
MEAA understand Network Ten will likely meet with staff to discuss the outcome of its meeting with its bankers and the options the company is considering.
