A second regional newspaper publisher is imposing a pay freeze for 2012, the National Union of Journalists has claimed.
According to the union, Newsquest has imposed a pay freeze for staff at papers at its York, Darlington, South Essex, Bolton, Bury and Glasgow centres, with a review promised later in the year.
The news comes just a year after Newsquest lifted a previous two-year pay freeze which had been in place across the group since 2008.
It follows an announcement last week by Trinity Mirror that all 6,500 of its staff, including management would not receive a pay rise in 2012.
The union is now demanding talks with the companies, claiming Newsquest has “jumped on the pay freeze bandwagon.”
It says that figures from last year show that individual companies within Newsquest, such as Newsquest Midlands South, made a 40pc profit despite the company claiming redundancies were a result of the economic downturn.
Northern and Midlands organiser Chris Morley said: “We now have growing evidence that Newsquest is trying to bring in a pay freeze across the group by stealth for 2012 at a time of unprecedented hardship for our members.
“If there is no increase in 2012, it will be the third year in four that salaries have failed to rise. This is unsustainable for massively hard-pressed staff who have not only had to contend with a 5pc erosion of their pay by inflation, but also had to take heavier workloads due to waves of redundancies.”
The union has claimed that its journalists’ chapels in York, Darlington, South Essex, Bolton, Bury and Glasgow have all reported pay freezes but as with the last freeze, it is believed to apply across the whole group.
Paul Davidson, chief executive of Newsquest had not commented at the time of publication.
Earlier the union had also condemned Trinity Mirror’s pay freeze announcement of last week which it called a ‘kick in the teeth.’
Chris Morley, said: “If the situation is as serious as the company makes out, the board needs to engage in serious dialogue with its staff to navigate its way through these difficult circumstances. The NUJ has consistently called for such talks with Trinity Mirror but has had this offer constantly rejected.”
Trinity Mirror said it did not wish to comment further on its pay freeze but last week said that 2011 had been a challenging year and 2012 showed no signs of improving.
It said the decision not to hold a pay review in Trinity Mirror during 2012 applies to everyone – the Board, all management and employees of the Group.
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Considering the RPI is 5.2per cent, this is not a pay freeze, this is a pay cut. 2pc increase earlier this year was the first for three years, so while energy prices, rents, mortgages, phone bills have all increased, our monthly salaries have remained roughly the same. But what is the alternative?
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Newsquest ALWAYS cower before the threat of industrial action. Make it happen my friends. Worst newspaper owners in history
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This shouldn’t surprise anyone.
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It certainly doesn’t surprise me.
Soon as I saw the Trinity announcement last week I wondered how long it would be before Newsquest jumped in.
Didn’t have long to wait.
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I remember my old boss at the HDM being so embarrassed at the annual pay rise given to journalists that he would write the increment down on a piece of paper and sheepishly hand it over the desk during one’s annual review! I think it equated to about 0.3 per cent each year.
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How long before Northcliffe join the bandwagon.
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‘Unprecedented hardship’ is a starving Somali in a refugee camp who owns just the shirt on their backs!
Or an Irish farmer in the 1850s battling the potato famine. Too weak to work but to proud to give in.
Ironic that a journalistic representative should resort to unhelpful and cringeing hyperbole.
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I wonder who will be the next to freeze wages
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Hasn’t the KM group had a “pay freeze” for several years now?
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Judging by our local Newsquest paper, they put a freeze on journalism a few months ago too
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Actually, the pay freeze in NW region came out on Nov 18 – before TM. Hidden in a memo offering staff ‘furlough’ again!
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Don’t know much about Newsquest but were employees really expecting a cracking rise? Join the real world and hang on to your employment for as long as you can. It may be later than you think.
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I’m a Newsquest employee. Our editor has just got a new company car. Maybe there should be a freeze on those too? Just a thought…
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Ugly rumour has it they are also asking staff to take “furloughs” (unpaid holidays) again, too. And after all that profit!
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That’s no rumour, we got the letters last week. Apparently it’s a chance to “redress the work life balance”. The only problem is that if anyone takes any time off, holiday or furlough, they still have to get the same amount of work done – they’ll just have less time to do it in.
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Sounds like the Uk industry is not a good place to be.
Luckily, I got out a decade ago and here in Oz, we received a 3.3% rise this year, with another next year and again in 2013.
Sorry to appear to gloat, but life is much better here than there!
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NQ had some once-terrific evening papers. They turned them into morning papers, slashed staff to stupid levels and the rest is newspaper history. Great papers-shame about the owners.
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The unpaid leave thing ( which is becoming a bit of a habit with Newsquest) is ludicrous. I suggest the company’s employees offer to reduce the huge number of hours they work WITHOUT pay and tell their fat-cat bosses to forget any ideas about furlough leave. It’s time this shower of money-grabbing bean-counters got real.
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The 2 pc pay rise last year was immediately grabbed back by Newsquest by imposing a week’s ‘furlough’, which amounts to a ‘cut’ of 2.5% on annual salary.
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