Newsquest makes Christmas cuts & redundancies as boss pockets £1million plus

As readers will know the local press is in crisis. The Wembley and Harrow Observer went over to on-line only with extremley limited coverage of local news and the Brent and Kilburn Times is much reduced in size and coverage as a result of staff cuts.

Now Newsquest, publisher of local newspapers is making staff redundant as this press release from the NUJ reports:

Newsquest’s chief executive Henry Faure Walker’s pay and perks have passed the £1m mark, but scores of journalists face being made redundant just in time for Christmas. Others have been told their meagre overtime and anti-social hours’ payments will be pared down.  

Newspapers throughout the group have been told jobs will go and payments for working bank holidays and weekends and mileage rates will be cut. This follows a year of job losses, title closures and cuts which have all taken their toll on staff, as a group-wide stress survey has shown. Reps said the latest round was “potentially hazardous to health – both physically and mentally”.

The Newsquest November cull has become such a regular feature that it has been given its own festive hashtag of #Scroogequest

Union reps met on Monday 27 November to discuss the situation. Newsquest refuses to consult the union on a national level, despite it being obvious that all its newspapers are controlled centrally by the group. One rep called the latest round of cuts “insane” since it will be impossible for the remaining staff to take on the extra work.

Staff at Darlington have decided to ballot for industrial action and the ballot will start on Thursday 7 December.

In York, where The Press, Gazette & Herald, York Herald and Yorkshire Living are published, three staff jobs are at risk of redundancy, including the popular arts editor, and no editing staff will work on Sundays. At the Bradford Telegraph and Argus the five roles are at risk with three newsdesk jobs to be cut to one, and an edition dropped, while the number of journalists on the Craven Herald and Ilkley Gazette will be reduced from three to two. In south London the staff’s work-to-rule is one year old. A sub-editor and freelance photographer have recently been cut. In Glasgow, several long-serving staff have agreed to leave, with some negotiating freelance contracts with Newsquest. After the editors of The Herald and Evening Times step down in December, Newsquest's flagship titles will be run by a single editor-in-chief, Donald Martin.  

Newsquest plans to shut the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard’s office in Cirencester with two editorial roles at risk of redundancy. The company also plans to reduce the number of sports editors working at three sister titles – the Standard, the Gloucestershire Gazette and the Stroud News & Journal – from three to two. Consultations will be completed at the end of the month and the Standard’s office will close at the end of December if the proposals go ahead. Fears that cuts would inevitably follow the sale of the Isle of Wight County Press have proved correct – Newsquest has called for voluntary redundancies four months after it bought out the independent publisher.

The Newsquest NUJ group chapel said: “Reps from around the group met and relayed an appalling array of job cuts in key areas of the newsrooms and arrogant moves to strip away the small recognition staff get for the sacrifices they make for working bank holidays and weekends.

“The cuts are relentless and pitiless and are potentially hazardous to health – both physically and mentally – as the comprehensive NUJ stress survey completed just a few months ago showed.

“We demand that senior managers carry out their legal duties and take a grip on the clear safety concerns that are flashing red throughout the group. They cannot be Pontius Pilate and wash their hands of the implications of their demands to local managers to meet unrealistic financial targets. Our members deserve safe and healthy workplaces where they have the resources to produce quality journalism and have enough pay to support themselves and their families. This cannot be too much to ask when their boss has just celebrated his pay package yielding £1 million with the meter still ticking and the year-end still a month away.”

Chris Morley, Newsquest NUJ group co-ordinator, said: “Newsquest is addicted to cuts in a way that gamblers are to fixed odd betting machines. This is no strategy for the short-term – never mind the long-term. Savage cuts have not worked in the past 10 years, so why do they think it will turn the company’s fortunes around now? We strongly urge senior management to take matters in hand. Give long-suffering staff the break they so desperately need and reverse the strategy into one of investment. With no debt, the company can clearly afford this, but what it can’t afford is a broken and demoralised workforce that is driven into the ground.”

The survey, which used a traffic light system to evaluate the levels of stress, took place during the second half of August and September 2017 among Newsquest NUJ members and attracted a strong response with 115 completed surveys.  

In a letter relaying the results to Newsquest, Chris Morey said: “I would hope that you recognise the fact that five of the seven categories of ‘stressors’ - demands, managers’ support, relationships, role, and change - were all red – was extremely serious. Even in the remaining two categories – control and peer support – the amber score showed that there was a ‘clear need for improvement’. Of the 32 questions asked, only one, ‘I have a choice in deciding how I do my work’, was scored lower than red or amber.”

Anonymous comments from journalists taking part in the survey said:

“I often feel stressed, under pressure and don’t take enough screen breaks, or breaks in general. Even taking holidays, because of lack of staff, is a stressful business. I work very long hours. Because I often work remotely, as they closed our office, I am alone and isolated.”

“The lack of organisation, harassment of colleagues and a bullying line-manager have created unprecedented stress levels.”

“Pressure of online demands means working at lightning speed for up to 12 hours a day with no real break.”

“I am concerned that cracks are appearing in my health that are directly linked to the job.”

Chris Morley concluded: “It is a fundamental legal responsibility of management to provide a safe and healthy working environment. It is the NUJ contention that, in many Newsquest centres, the company is at risk of not complying with this legal requirement. To date, we believe the company’s response has not been adequate, particularly as there is a lack of faith that anything positive will be done to address failings locally, given the relentless corporate pressure of cost-cutting and staff reductions.”

Find out how much Faure Walker has made using the NUJ’s pay meter - many of his staff haven’t yet hit £20,000 

https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/proper-pay-matters-meter-is-ticking-on-newsquest/

Newsquest questioned over ‘opaque’ annual accounts and boardroom pay after staff cuts

 From the NUJ which is of particular interest regarding the health and viability of local newspapers.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has asked for questions to be answered by Newsquest following the publication of its 2015 accounts.

The union said the newspaper group should clarify why its latest accounts have wiped hundreds of millions of pounds off its revenue column, turned in a paper loss of £47 million and sliced more than 3,500 staff off the books compared to the previous 12 months.

Newsquest, a subsidiary of US giant Gannett, eventually filed its official UK accounts for 2015 four months late with Companies House and revealed that it had moved to a new accounting model which strips away the need for more detailed reporting of its figures.

So while in 2014, Newsquest reported turnover of £279 million and operating profits of £51.3 million, the newly produced figures for 2015 mysteriously show these as just £1.09 million and an operating loss of £47.2 million respectively – mainly because of an “impairment charge” or write down on the value of its local companies of £55.6 million.

Newsquest said it has adopted a new FRS 101 accounting standard and says in its accounts it has done so to take “advantage of disclosure exemptions allowed under this standard”

In 2014 Newsquest quoted its official total staffing number as 3,997 (of which 1,369 were editorial), in 2015 the total was only given as 393 (149 editorial).

But the 2015 accounts do shed more light on the pay of Henry Faure Walker and appear to contradict some claims by the company about his overall pay package made when it was revealed earlier this month as $1.45 million.

Then a company spokesperson said the chief executive’s salary was £310,000 - whereas the latest figures show a package of £591,804 for the “highest paid director”. And while Newsquest said publicly Walker’s pension payment from the company was £10,000 for the year, the accounts say this figure was actually £18,000.

The company spokesperson also sought to explain the high overall total for Walker’s pay package as in part due to an undisclosed relocation package. This is now revealed as £47,000 in the accounts – worth about the salaries of two journalists made redundant during the year.

The union believes that at a time of continuing painful austerity for Newsquest’s employees, the company should not cherry pick the details it chooses to make public about its profitability, trading state and especially boardroom pay. Local NUJ chapels have been told there would be no pay rise for members in 2017.

Chris Morley, NUJ Northern and Midlands organiser, said:

We have been tracking the non-filing of Newsquest accounts for months given the importance to staff, who have suffered nearly a decade without a pay rise, to know more about the company’s ability to pay.

We are astonished that the company has moved to make its accounts even more opaque and less relevant when long-suffering staff deserve far better. As it is, missing the formal deadline to file the accounts by four months has cost the company thousands in fines – money that is desperately needed to invest in starved editorial resources.

The chief executive’s pay is incredibly high given the significantly smaller scale of the group and the huge amount of additional share options flowing his way. I’m sure the many journalists in the north of England and elsewhere in the country, whose jobs were destroyed when the work moved to Newport subbing hub, would have seriously considered moving if they had been given the relocation allowance of £47,000 made available to the chief executive.

 

Strike for quality journalism

Local newspapers are under pressure because of a decline in advertising and readership as well as because of competition from the internet. However when publishers make cuts this often reinforces the decline with fewer journalists meaning less time for investigations and a tendency to do cut and paste jobs on press releases. Some newspapers end up padded out with stories from neighbouring areas rather than the their own borough.

I am convinced that a robust and active local press is absolutely necessary to hold the local council to account as well as providing a focus that cements local community solidarity.

Newsquest publishes the Harrow Times and Newsquest journalists in South London are to strike again this week in their continuing dispute over redundancies and in support of quality local journalism. Unlike some local newspapers the titles concerned are in profit.

The strike began on  Monday June 27 and is due to end at midnight on Thursday June 30.

NUJ negotiator Jenny Lennox said: “We’ve had a very successful two-day strike last week, and it is worth noting that a dozen journalists have joined the union since the dispute began. This reflects the deep anger which journalists employed by Newsquest at their bosses’ determination to avoid consulting with staff on the future of their papers.”

The NUJ strikers had previously adopted a unanimous vote of no confidence in their top management after a company decision to make an unspecified number of editorial staff redundant while the group’s titles continue to make substantial profits.

The strikers keep journalists and readers informed of developments through a special strike blog

The journalists deserve our support.