Staff at Johnston Press’s Scottish titles have upgraded their threat of strike action after details emerged of a planned restructure.
Last month the company warned of job losses across its business and promised a series of follow-up announcements on how individual publishing centres would be affected.
Now Scotsman editor-in-chief Ian Stewart has published details of a new structure for the company’s two daily and 28 weekly titles north of the border.
According to the National Union of Journalists, it will involve the loss of 13 posts on The Scotsman, Scotsman on Sunday and Edinburgh Evening News, and up to 20 on the local weeklies.
The company is seeking applications for voluntary redundancy across the Scottish operation, but the union claims only two people have so far applied.
At a chapel meeting yesterday, NUJ members at The Scotsman strengthened their warning that compulsory redundancies would lead to an automatic threat of industrial action to warn of an all-out strike.
“It is the position of this chapel that the threat of any compulsory redundancy will trigger an automatic ballot for strike action,” it said in a statement.
One member of staff who attended the meeting described the mood as “decidedly ugly.”
The restructure plans, which have been seen by HTFP, involve splitting the weeklies division into four geographical units covering the North of Scotland, Fire and Islands, Central Scotland and South of Scotland.
Each of the four units would have its own editor overseeing around seven titles, reporting into Colin Hume as editorial director, Scottish weeklies.
The restructure plans also involve the creation of a single ‘communities content’ team responsible for “filtering, allocation and creation of local news stories feeding our papers and websites.”
There will continue to be separate sports teams for the dailies and weeklies, but they will have a combined management structure.
A Johnston Press spokeswoman said: “We will continue to work closely with team members who may be affected by these proposals and will engage with the NUJ over this matter as appropriate.”
The company has previously said that the job loss figures quoted by the NUJ were a “worst case scenario.”
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Only two applications for VR suggests how badly people need their jobs and I fully sympathise with everyone affected here. But striking will have what effect exactly? We are not talking about junior doctors or even train/bus drivers, who impact the public in a direct way. And how long do you strike for? Whatever the duration of any industrial action I’m sure enough frightened souls (think mortgages, household bills, children, etc.) would put something out – and then what? All of us in the business need to prepare for new jobs/directions because this journey has almost reached the end.
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I’m not sure where the Union got the figure of only two people applying for VR – I know there are at least 3 people who have applied across the weeklies.
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I do not believe just two have applied for VR. At my former place of work VR was always over subscribed and remember people getting turned down. As a fellow member of the Union, don’t believe a word coming out of their mouth. The NUJ has not been of any use in the past 8 years since newspapers started cutting staff.
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Pointless striking unless everyone strikes, editorial, advertising, delivery, production etc
If not it will not affect the business one iota
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How about building links with workers at the printing centres, who are members of Unite? If journalists and printers working together can stop publication, the employers’ cash flow is hit immediately, and that’s all JP are interested in – money. And our time would be better spent forming support groups to help strikers, raising funds, than in telling them to roll over and comply as management’s latest redundancy programme scythes through them.
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Take my advice and grab VR if you can,theres no future in the regionals so steal a march on the others who`ll be in a similar boat before too long with a lot of people chasing a very few jobs
harsh but true
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Why has CEO Ashley Highfield’s pay soared while the company he is running is now half the size it once was pre-AH?? Less is more, it would seem.
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JP journos have become nothing more than wage slaves, hanging on until the inevitable comes. They’ve watched their products being systematically destroyed, had to work harder and longer for little reward and seen executive pay soar.
Two choices – take the redundo and run or strike in the hope it will make a difference. Even if it makes no difference you’ll feel better about yourselves.
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Strike action does work. It worked for TM with these barmy SEO targets and it worked for me and my colleagues when Newsquest wanted to slash our mileage rates. Saying it doesn’t work and sowing malaise does nobody any favours. There’s still good careers to be had in journalism, agreed probably not at local level – but tell that to someone who flies around Japan reviewing Game Boys for Reuters. Everyone starts somewhere and if these people love being journalists I don’t blame them and would encourage them to rage against the dying of the light. Good luck to them!
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…journalists are supposed to have guts. Journalists faced down the Nazis and Richard Nixon, journalists are languishing in prison all over the world. If you haven’t got the stones to even stand up for your own rights and those of your colleagues you don’t deserve to call yourself a member of such a brave profession.
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Come on,
Let’s hear it from JP shop floor workers who love their job. No middle management brown Noser’s please.
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Jeff: you might convince them to rage but the light is still dying – a poetic way of saying “local-level” journalism (for one of the big publishers) as a paying job is on the way out fast. Look back over the last 13 months of HTFP (let’s take January 2015 as base camp) and it’s been an endless roll-call of redundancies, office closures and cutbacks (one “major player” even had to stop ordering stationery before Christmas). I can see how passionate you are about this but that passion was forged in different times, better times, and you admit yourself that they’re gone – “There’s still good careers to be had in journalism, agreed probably not at local level.” I agree we SHOULD all be morally principled and strong but watching the removal men taking all your stuff out of your house as you contemplate life in a bed-sit requires a degree of courage that most of us (including old Minim) simply do not possess. My advice is repeated – get out now before you’re forced out. In its current form this is a dead duck industry and stories like the one about which we’re commenting here will just keep on running.
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Jeff Jones. Loving your work, man.
Yep, rage in the dying light. Who knows, such action may rekindle a few games.
Dick, I was morally principled and strong. Johnston Press sacked me. My integrity remains intact. I’d do exactly the same again.
If you ain’t got your self esteem you’ve got nowt. Go JP journos. Ashley is in the last chance saloon, help him out of the door
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I wonder if the suits could explain in simple language what they’re up to. They wrecked newspapers throughout the land, their website are very poor, they’ve destroyed careers and people’s lives by decimating staff. Yet their profits are down, share price is through the floor, and their circulations are slashed. Their products are an insult to the hundreds of communities they used to serve. Cover prices keep rising. Offices have been shut. Morale us at an all-time low. Where’s the point in it all? Who is benefitting by all these moronic re-organisations?
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Strike action does not work, it did in the 70s when there was strength in unity and paper production processes were more technical and when the unions had power, in 2016 the unions are all but dead and are lions without teeth,not taken seriously by the employers . Unless everyone strikes in support then the papers will continue to get published with no noticeable difference or disruption to speak of thanks to non members,the wealth of RGC and the fear of losing their job by the masses who’ll look the other way and carry on regardless.
My advice is take the money and run, there’s no long term future in the regionals and all jobs are potentially at risk, if not today then further down the line so you might as well get as much as you can and go for the few jobs that are out there before you find yourself joined by colleagues when their time comes.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow but long term like myself and hundreds of others you’ll find a happier more rewarding and more fulfilling future lies ahead where you’ll be able to watch this type of story unfolding from a distance free from the grief, anxiety and stress that working in the regional press will continue to pile on its employees as it collapses in on itself
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Great to see that some journalists still have the gonads to make a stand. The alternative? Do nothing and roll over? Really? I’m with Jeff and Harry.
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I took the money and ran a few years ago, but with a heavy heart over the mortal damage done to our industry.
JP’s trail of misery leads right back to the astonishing incompetence and sheer greed demonstrated by Tim Bowdler and his fellow executive graspers
Bowdler was held up to be a business whizzkid yet bought up titles at eye-watering prices when the market was urging caution. One can only surmise that his eye was off the ball (was it ever really on it?) and on the bonuses and target money he would have received on top of an obscene salary, despite his appalling performance as CEO.
He’s living the good life while his former workers are staring into the unemployment abyss thanks to the debt mountain which he created.
We don’t know whether strike action will do any good – and I’ve manned the barricades in my time – but still better to go out with a roar than a whimper.
Good luck
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