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Newsquest faces four days of strike action

Regional publisher Newsquest is facing four successive days of strike action next week after journalists at Brighton daily
The Argus voted for a stoppage.

National Union of Journalists members at the Southern Daily Echo in Southampton are to hold the second of two two-day-strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday next week over the company’s continuing pay freeze.

It will be followed by a similar two-day stoppage next Thursday and Friday at The Argus after its NUJ chapel voted 91pc in favour of strike action.

The Argus ballot was held over plans to centralise the newspaper’s subbing operations at Southampton with the loss of five sub-editing posts in Brighton along with Worthing Sentinel editor Paul Holden, who is also being made redundant.

It is understood that 82.8pc of NUJ members took part in the ballot which was held last week.

Newsquest is also facing the possibility of further industrial action at the Northern Echo in Darlington, where eight jobs are under threat as a result of plans to merge its subbing operation with a weekly stablemate.

No-one from Newsquest had responded to requests for a comment at the time of publication.

12 comments

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  • November 11, 2010 at 10:04 am
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    Call a national Newsquest strike and I’ll be out like a shot.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 10:21 am
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    It’s strange how nobody from management responds to give a company point of view in stories about industrial action. I suppose it is very difficult to defend the indefensible.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 10:31 am
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    What a crying shame for the Argus, which was once one of the best evening papers in the country. Newsquest greed and I suspect weak management has turned it into a run of the mill morning paper which is still a minor miracle when you consider the staffing levels there. Moving subs to a central hub, eh? Won’t be long before Atex, layout before text and all the horrors that involves for reporting standards arrive. good luck to the strikers.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 11:43 am
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    When your local papers are owned by the Americans can you eally expect them to be bothered with subbing at local level. It’s the $$$s that count. My grandad worked on that title for 72 yes seventy-two years, I cannot begin to think what he would have mde of all this.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 12:05 pm
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    I think the rest of us will be interested at the outcome of these strikes as there have been many cutbacks over the years and these are the first ‘big strikes’ since I remember. There are too many young journalists who always vot ‘no’ to action in my area which meant we had to take what we were given.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 12:53 pm
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    Can’t expect the public to be interested in hacks’ disputes but there is growing unrest in the population at the top earners still creaming it in all walks of life while the relatively poorly paid get screwed. Newspaper industry is just one reflection of that. The “haves” will always find a way to hang on, and this government won’t stop them.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 12:55 pm
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    Oh please wake up! Striking solves nothing. Don’t you read the financial statements? Sits vac revenue continues to go and thanks to the web it isn’t coming back. The regional newspaper business model has changed for ever and you had better change with it. If you are a down table sub, hard luck you are in the same boat as the Comps. were 10 or was it 20 yrs ago. Perhaps you can go back to doing a bit of reporting – I expect most of you only became subs to get a bit more cash and came into the industry to be reporters. Just as St Margret of Grantham said, you can’t beat the market, and you can’t uninvent technology. Still hunt’in though – Tally Ho.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 3:04 pm
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    To Me to You! Or should I say: Newsquest exec? How about fewer glib remarks and more concern about jobs and the survival of our once-great industry? We are taking about livelihoods here, not just balance sheets!

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  • November 11, 2010 at 3:09 pm
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    That’s the problem. Read financial statements and do a bit of digging and you find top management is still on sky-high money and awarding itself pay rises- while shedding staff because the company is reported to be doing badly. No-one is disputing we all have to react to changing technology and the current economic crisis and job losses are the sad price. The problem obvious to even the most blatant company brown-nose is that it is a one-way street.

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  • November 11, 2010 at 4:03 pm
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    From me to you, clearly a plant. But strikes do work – even more so when they are a last ditch effort to save jobs and a once proud industry. Technology is progress, this aint about that my friend. Wake up – its about running papers into the ground to maximise shareholder profit. National strike now.

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  • November 12, 2010 at 9:46 am
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    We can’t go on together with suspicious minds. Excuse the flippancy. Hacks realise these are hard times (their friends have lost jobs through NO fault of their own for C… sake!) But they suspect companies are using it as an excuse to shed even more staff to protect top salaries and feed the greediest of shareholders. It’s not working. Look at share prices. See you down the chip shop.

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