Journalists in Leeds have voted by a wide margin for strike action in the continuing row over redundancies at the city’s two daily titles.

Members of the National Union of Journalists on the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post decided to hold a ballot after the company decided to make three photographers compulsorily redundant.

In addition, managers at the Johnston Press-owned titles are requesting a further 15 voluntary redundancies – six from YP editorial, six from YEP editorial, and three from a pool of picture technicians who serve both papers.

The vote in the secret postal ballot was 109 for strike action with three against. The papers’ joint NUJ chapels will meet later today to decide their next steps.

Chris Morley, NUJ Northern regional organiser, said: “The Yorkshire Post and Evening Post chapels have given a lead to all NUJ members fighting against unnecessary and unworkable job cuts.”

Johnston Press journalists in Derry, Northern Ireland, are also balloting for industrial action.

No response to the strike vote has yet been received from Johnston Press.

Comments

kevin (12/02/2009 19:55:04)
Oh Don’t worry, I’m sure the journalists will be able to do the photography a well, after all we are all ” Multimedia” trained now aren’t we?.
Yeah, right, that will be a point and shoot camera or a mobile. Hey, why don’t we just get Joe Public to send us in the pictures – yee gods I despair.

Dave W (12/02/2009 20:22:42)
The Yorkshire Post like the Birmingham Post are well respected professional papers using quality photography over many years, I`m sure all press photographers realise the need for streaming videos etc in this multimedia world, but like wise, Editors should also realise having seen some of the poor results from use all “devices”, that they must retain a certain amount of quality or they will lose the respect of the business market they aspire to.

Sally Ann (12/02/2009 21:21:13)
Good on you Leeds! I hope this strike goes ahead, not because I think it will win, but because I think it’s time we really stood up for ourselves. JP is a cheapskate organisation that has let down its employees, its readers and its customers. If we’ve got to go down, let’s at least go down fighting.

rob (12/02/2009 21:54:10)
Well done to the staff in Leeds for taking a stand.
Trinity Mirror’s NUJ chapels elsewhere in the country have done nothing as photo staff have been shown the door.
Journalists happily took a pay rise in return for doing video while photographers adopted video but without the pay rise.
Did the union do anything when we lost a photographer and department head? No, the newly created Multi Media Journalists pocketed their N96’s and pay rise. Management don’t care what photo quality is like, they are only interisted in counting the number of faces in the paper.

albert wright (13/02/2009 10:48:02)
So you removed the comments on the Stoke Sentinel sacking 4 photographers …? Maybe it is all too much for Northclifffe to admit to messing up the sale of its newspapers

HoldtheFrontPage (13/02/2009 11:00:36)
Albert,
We removed a particular comment about the Stoke Sentinel because it was potentially libellous.
We have already covered on the site the fact that there have recently been redundancies in the paper’s photographic team.

Cameron (13/02/2009 12:30:26)
I would point out that this dispute is not just about photographic redundancies, although that is a key element. It is about generations of owners who have milked the newspapers for maximum profit, treated (and paid) the journalists with complete contempt and installed bone-headed short-termists as managers of acquiescent editors. What sort of a company is it that pays its regional managing director a handsome bonus while imposing a wage freeze and redundancies on the workers – while still making many millions in profits? Answer: one that deserves everything coming to it.