Fairfax extends talks with striking journos, union proposes ‘insourcing’ solution
Fairfax is locked in talks with journalists and the journalists’ union over the company’s decision to outsource 60 production jobs to New Zealand.
Fairfax Regional Media agreed to extend the deadline for talks until close-of-business on Thursday, after strikes and rallies were staged in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle against proposals that could see over the editorial staff of some mastheads reduced by a half.
The decision came after journalists from the Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury and Sydney Morning Herald and officials from the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance spent three and a half hours with Fairfax Regional Media boss Allan Browne in Sydney looking to extend the consultation beyond close-of-business today.
This is in addition to previous protests. I’m afraid that the explanation given by Fairfax is just a cover up, hoping that we, the Novocastrians, are dumb enough to accept it. NMH and Illawarra papers are local – one cannot get away from that fact. Both of these communities deserve their own paper for their own news. As suggested before “CEO’ Hywood investigate fully, how Newcastle manages financially – pass that along to those outlets who are floundering.
Fairfax management is talking with the MEAA now, but Hywood and his stooges didn’t have the guts to talk to the union before their secret move to send production off to a second-rate sweatshop in New Zealand.
Hywood and his yes-men spout platitudes about transforming the business, but moral courage appears to be in short supply at management level.
The elephant in the room is that print journos and soft-porn superstars are the wrong people to be managing Fairfax into the 21st century.
Maybe Rinehart IS what’s needed if she can recognise how to hire the right people to take Fairfax digital (and stay the hell out of editorial). Successful new media start-ups would kill to have the resources of a billion dollar media company, and yet they are competing and winning on a shoe-string…