A ballot of members of the National Union of Journalists at The Herald – and sister titles, the Sunday Herald and Evening Times – has delivered an overwhelming vote in favour of continuing a work-to-rule that has been in operation since the start of the year.
This is the second, consecutive ballot of NUJ members at the newspapers, following compulsory redundancies in December and the result – announced today – is 61-30 in favour of strike action and 78-14 in favour of action short of strike action, such as a work-to-rule.
Six editorial staff were the subject of compulsory redundancy around Christmas time, on top of a further half dozen who volunteered.
Strike action is not expected following this latest vote, but the work-to-rule will remain in place. The ballot result gives the NUJ the option of calling for strike action, until another ballot is required to be run – by law – in 12 weeks' time.
The Scottish Organiser of the NUJ, Paul Holleran, told allmediascotland.com: “The result shows there is still a strong feeling about the redundancies [in December] and the threat of redundancies in the future.”
Update: The website, holdthefrontpage, adds, on April 5, the following: “A spokesman for the Herald and Times Group said the company was 'disappointed' the work-to-rule would continue and said only half of NUJ members at the titles had voted for it.
“He said: 'We hope they and their colleagues think very seriously about the implications of any action that might harm our products. This is a uniquely challenging time for the media market when we would expect the team to pull together to support the titles and jobs.'”
