Jobs are at risk at the Press Association after plans were announced to restructure its TV listings business.
PA has refused to confirm the numbers affected, but it is understood up to 27 members of staff at its Howden office in East Yorkshire are at risk of redundancy.
The agency supplies TV listings to most national and regional newspaper groups although some of the work has already been outsourced to external providers.
It has been claimed that the restructure plan could also see the organisation selling-off some of its office space in Howden although PA has declined to comment on this.
A spokeswoman for PA told HTFP: “(On Thursday) we announced a restructuring proposal in our TV Listings business.
“We will shortly be entering into consultations with our staff to discuss these plans before any final decisions are made. We have no further comments to make at this stage.”
The move comes after two former PA journalists settled out of court in October following Mirror Group’s decision to outsource TV listings from PA to French sub-editing contractor PM81 in 2012.
Clare Hoppett and Kath Haigh were left jobless and without redundancy compensation by the move, and had been due to take their cases to an employment tribunal before a settlement was reached with PM81.
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Hopefully, PA have learnt their lesson in how they have treated staff previously when making people redundant… Now will staff be treated fairly when it comes to who is kept on and who is let go – that is the question…. Good luck all and if anybody from PA is reading maybe contact the NUJ for some redundancy advice.
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I thought the Prime Minister’s insistence that falling oil prices means higher wage growth should actually mean PA should be announcing pay rises for all of its staff!!!
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I used to work as a TV listings producer for PA in Howden. Great days, they were. At the time, half the job was done by poor souls in a copywriting sweatshop in Mangalore, then sent to us to “fix” (something, something, cost-cutting, outsourcing, efficiences, etc).
I still remember the day my colleagues at the Metro listings team were let go. They were led out of the building for a “special meeting”, then ordered to hand over their keycards, told they were all sacked and nobody was getting back in. Security staff gathered up any coats, bags, etc that had been left behind.
True story.
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