THE number of posts to be axed at the Daily Record and Sunday Mail looks set to be reduced from 70 to around 50, following negotiations yesterday between management and the National Union of Journalists.
On Monday, it announced that almost a third of the papers’ 256 staff was facing redundancy – as part of a merging of production that would see most journalists working across both titles and Record editor, Bruce Waddell, at the helm of the two newspapers, as editor-in-chief.
Yesterday, at meeting of NUJ members at the papers, Scottish Organiser, Paul Holleran, resisted calls for industrial action and a boycott of the merging process.
He argued the union maintain the same policy it operated when all but a handful of the 250 journalists at the Herald group of newspapers were, in December, asked to re-apply for 40 fewer posts: ie it seeks to ensure that all departures are voluntary and on the best possible payment terms.
Having already attended one meeting with the Record and Sunday Mail’s managing director and head of HR, Mark Hollinshead and Linda Sommerville, he then went into a second from which he believes he has secured a saving of around 20 posts, plus an extension by a week to the 30-day consultation process announced by management on Monday.
He says that the numbers from a previous round of voluntary redunancies – in December – have been included among the 70 being earmarked this time around. Also, those who failed to gain voluntary redundancy in December are to be allowed to present their case again.
He told allmediascotland.com: “We believe progress has been made in respect of getting the numbers down and winning breathing space, in terms of the extra week’s consultation, for staff to find out what the new posts will entail and efforts to maximise the voluntary redundancy terms.”
