Culture

Staff From The Sydney Morning Herald And The Age Just Went On Strike

The strike follows the company's plans to cut 80 full-time jobs across Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms, announced earlier today.

by Steph Harmon  7 May 2014

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Earlier today, Fairfax Media announced a proposal that could see up to 80 redunancies made across its newspapers. The announcement was made in an email to all staff from Allen Williams, the managing director of Australian Publishing Media, which publishes Fairfax mastheads including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Canberra Times. It comes two years after Fairfax announced they would cut 1900 staff, and begin charging for content on The Age and SMH websites.

In the email, reprinted in full by Mumbrella, Williams described the proposed changes as “focused on the continuing transformation of our business.” The email outlined the company’s plans to cut 35 full-time workers from the in-house editorial production team, 15 from Life Media (their lifestyle branch), and 30 from photographic departments. “We have already been in contact with the MEAA about these proposed changes,” he wrote.

But the MEAA had their own statement to release a few hours ago. “The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) says the latest round of redundancies at Fairfax Media’s metro daily newspapers represent an assault on the quality journalism that has been the hallmark of the group for more than a century.”

The release quoted MEAA federal secretary Christopher Warren: “This will further erode the ability of the staff who remain to do their jobs without a marked increase in work intensification. It strips a massive loss in skills, experience and knowledge from the group,” he said. “Fairfax seems incapable of deciding on new production arrangements and sticking with them. The only decision the company seems capable of making is to keep cutting staff. When do we reach the point of no return?”

The journalists aren’t going down without a fight. Following the #fairfax and #savetheage hashtags will lead you to tweets from Fairfax workers who are combating the redundancies with a 24-hour strike, effective immediately.

We’ll keep reporting as more news comes in. For now, staff from The Age at least appear to have packed it in.

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UPDATE 7.30pm: More staff join strike; Fairfax threatens termination

According to The Guardian, staff at the Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury, the Canberra Times and Financial Review have joined the strike.

Meanwhile, managing director of Australian Publishing Media Allen Williams has sent another all-staff email calling the action “unlawful”, and threatening that if staff go on strike, the company will “consider disciplinary action … which may include the possibility of termination of your employment”.

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Feature image via ABC News Melbourne on Twitter.