Regional newspaper publisher Sir Ray Tindle is to pay each of his staff a minimum bonus of £100 at a cost of £80,000.

Earlier this year, Tindle Newspapers Limited imposed a pay freeze in common with several other major regional publishing groups.

The freeze is to continue into 2010, but yesterday Sir Ray announced that all staff would get a minimum bonus of £100 in their pay packets this month.

In a further move, staff in the most profitable subsidiaries within TNL will receive up to £200, with a maximum of £300 payable at the end of the company’s financial year in March.

The changes were set out in a memo to all staff from Sir Ray following a special board meeting yesterday.

Tindle director Wendy Craig told HTFP: “Everybody will get something. It’s an incentive as well as a thank-you.”

The additional bonuses over and above the ‘group bonus’ of £100 will be paid on the basis of how each subsidiary company has performed in terms of profitability compared with 2007, the year before the recession.

The extra sum payable will be a percentage of £200 representing the level of profits made by the company in question compared to that year.

Thus if a company has made 50pc of the profits made in the same period in 2007, a ‘local bonus’ of £100 will be payable to all its staff.

This figure will be recalculated for the full year at the end of March 2010, with further bonuses of up to £100 available if companies have improved their profitability position by then.

Comments

Onlooker (02/12/2009 08:59:47)
Nice gesture but won’t make much difference to local journalists with mortgages and families to support. Still, it’s better than nothing.

bystander (02/12/2009 09:26:27)
ouch!

Ad Manager (02/12/2009 11:12:35)
OMG, whatever they did you’d still complain! Take this as a gesture of good will and a thanks, if they did nothing you’d complain and you still complain when they’ve done something for you. Ungrateful is the word that springs to mind!

Axminster (02/12/2009 11:20:25)
I think Onlooker needs to take a look in the mirror. In this current climate be thankful you have a job, nevermind a bonus.! Thankyou Sir Ray.

Mr_Osato (02/12/2009 11:30:49)
surely in a time of unprecedented challenges for the local newspaper industry, where profits are down to as little as 10p in every pound, Sir Ray’s tragic lack of foresight and reckless spending will cost him dear in the long term, while the likes of Trinity, who reward their loyal staff with a one-off pre-Christmas redundancy payment, will flourish? We’ll see…

Onlooker (02/12/2009 11:38:35)
Axminster, you can get off your knees now…

Chukle (02/12/2009 13:07:48)
Well done Sir Ray !
How you doing this year Sly?

Jp Worker (02/12/2009 13:53:23)
It’s a nice enough gesture. I wonder if Sly Bailey or John Fry will be chucking any loose change our way this year though. The words “no” and “chance” come to mind. Merry Christmas!

SeanR6 (04/12/2009 14:01:21)
The freeze in pay and other cost cutting exercises have hit us hard. Though, unlike other companies, at least Sir Ray and the board are trying to redress that, and I have not lost any staff to redundancies in my office. If you don’t want your bonus donate it to someone who will appreciate it and be thankful you can meet most of your bills this Christmas unlike the 8% unemployed in this country.